THE HAGUE (AFP) — International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is expected on Monday to seek the arrest of Sudan President Omar al-Beshir, despite warnings the move could impact on the crisis in Darfur.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in an interview he was “very worried” by the possibility of Beshir’s indictment, which would be the first of a sitting head of state by the ICC.

“It would have very serious consequences for peacekeeping operations including the political process,” he told Le Figaro newspaper. “I’m very worried, but nobody can evade justice.”

The US State Department has confirmed newspaper reports that Moreno-Ocampo will name the Sudanese leader when he unveils evidence to the court in a new case involving crimes in the country’s war-stricken western Darfur region.

The prosecutor’s office announced last Thursday he would present evidence and name suspects Monday for “crimes committed in the whole of Darfur over the last five years”, but has so far refused to confirm Beshir would be targeted.

Khartoum, which rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction and refuses to surrender two war crimes suspects already named, has warned the move could threaten peace efforts.

“If there is a decision about President Beshir, it may destroy the peace process,” state minister for foreign affairs Al-Samani al-Wasila told AFP last week.

Arab and African leaders have also warned of the consequences.

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council “expressed its strong conviction that the search for justice should be pursued in a way that does not impede or jeopardize efforts aimed at promoting lasting peace.”

The Arab League said it would hold crisis talks on Sudan, while the Organisation of the Islamic Conference warned of “grave ramifications”.

As Darfur rebel groups welcomed the news, China’s UN ambassador said that plans to issue a warrant for Beshir would put peace prospects “in jeopardy”.

About 1,000 demonstrators rallied in Khartoum Sunday, denouncing the anticipated charges at a government-sponsored protest as Beshir chaired an emergency cabinet meeting.

Western embassies have advised nationals to limit unnecessary travel and the United Nations has stepped up its security levels amid fears that the ICC prosecutor’s move could spark violent retaliation.

Western officials fear Sudan could expel members of the United Nations and African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, or aid groups. Contingency plans have been made for an evacuation and non-essential staff have been told to stay at home on Monday.

Fears have also been voiced that naming Beshir could embolden Darfur rebels who attacked Khartoum in May.

On Tuesday last week, seven UN peacekeepers were killed and 22 were wounded in the ambush of a UN convoy in Darfur that some blamed on state-backed militia.

The world body says up to 300,000 people have died since the Darfur conflict broke out in February 2003. The Sudanese government puts the death toll at 10,000.

The conflict began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power.

Moreno-Ocampo’s request for a warrant would mark the first ever bid by the ICC, based in The Hague, to charge a sitting head of state.

Judges would next examine the application to ascertain whether reasonable grounds existed to believe that a crime within the court’s jurisdiction had been committed, before deciding whether to issue a warrant or not.

This could take several months.

KABUL (AFP) — Hundreds of militants stormed a remote military outpost in Afghanistan and briefly entered the base in a ferocious attack that left nine US soldiers dead, officials said Monday.

Dozens of insurgents were also killed in hours of fighting sparked after Sunday’s dawn assault on a newly-built NATO and Afghan army post in the mountainous northeastern province of Kunar, the NATO-led force said.

The attack was one of the deadliest involving international forces who arrived in Afghanistan after a US-led invasion drove the Al-Qaeda-linked Taliban from government in late 2001.

Fifteen US soldiers and four Afghan troops were wounded, officials said.

“It was a well-organised attack, it was a ferocious attack,” said Captain Mike Finney, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

“The troops in the combat outpost fought back hard to make sure the insurgents did not overrun the place.”

Hours of fighting, including air strikes, prevented the militants from taking over the base, with rebel casualties in the “high double figures”, said Finney.

Between 400 and 500 militants from various anti-government factions including Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the Hezb-i-Islami faction were involved, a senior Afghan defence ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

“They attacked the newly established base there and reached even its walls. At one point they had entered the base,” he said, citing information from the ground.

“I don’t know if the soldiers died inside the base or outside but the enemy had reached the walls.”

Troops were able to push them back with ground fighting and attack helicopters.

“Reports we got from the area suggest that about 40 enemy were killed and around the same number of them were wounded,” he said.

ISAF’s Finney said between 100 and 150 Afghan and international troops had moved into the outpost, near the village of Wanat, less than a week earlier.

Finney would not give the nationalities of the ISAF troops killed in the attack, but a Western official confirmed on condition of anonymity that they were all US nationals.

Americans form the bulk of the nearly 70,000 international troops in Afghanistan to help the fragile government fight back an insurgency led by the hardline Taliban, who were ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

The attack in Kunar, which adjoins Pakistan — where Afghan officials say insurgents are based, was one of the deadliest incidents for international forces in Afghanistan in years.

In June 2005, a rocket-propelled grenade brought down a Chinook helicopter in Kunar, killing 16 US soldiers. In September 2006, 14 British servicemen were killed when a Nimrod spy plane crashed in Helmand in the south.

Another international soldier was killed in Afghanistan on Sunday in a bomb blast in Helmand, the separate US-led coalition announced. The nationality of the soldier has not been released.

Sunday’s deaths took to 133 the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year amid a spike in the insurgency-linked violence.

The past weeks have seen several deadly incidents across the country as the extremist insurgency has intensified and troops have stepped up their operations.

The coalition said Sunday it had killed 40 militants in a two-day operation in Helmand.

The same day a suicide attack targeted at police in Uruzgan province killed 24 Afghans, most of them civilians in a bazaar, police said.

A suicide bomber attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul a week ago, killing at least 41 people. The Indian ambassador, Jayant Prasad, said more than 60 people were killed but this was not confirmed by Afghan officials.

Afghan investigations have found meanwhile that coalition air strikes in the first week of July together killed 64 civilians. The coalition says only rebels died but it is investigating.

New Delhi (PTI): The CBI on Sunday said it would look into the allegation that Noida police has destroyed evidence while probing the Arushi-Hemraj double murder case.

Claiming that the country’s premier probe agency has apprehended the real culprits in the case, its Director Vijay Shankar said “I say this with confidence that the CBI has opened up this blind case. We know who were the killers, we also know as to we have a lot of work to do ahead. Investigation is carrying on”.

Talking to private news channel NDTV 24X7, he said “in case there were evidences that were destroyed, they were destroyed wantonly, they were destroyed due to callousness, due to reasons beyond the local investigating agency’s control, all these shall be looked into.”

Replying to a query on media’s role in the case, Shankar said the inconsistencies which emerged during the coverage of the case were the “creation of media’s own”.

“It is for the media to decide as to how far to go and how much to investigate, should they in one go become the upholder of the cause of the victim, investigator, prosecutor and the judge…should they decide to violate the very limits of decency and privacy,” he said.

Arushi, a 14 year-old daughter of dentist couple-Dr Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, was killed in her Sector 25 house on the night of May 16. A day after the teenager’s body was recovered, the domestic servant Hemraj’s body was found on the terrace of the house.

Noida Police had arrested Rajesh Talwar for the murder.

A month after the incident, the case was transfered to CBI which had on Friday said there was no evidence against Rajesh and the dentist’s compounder has emerged as a “prime suspect.”

Even though the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has cleared Dr Rajesh Talwar of all charges in the murder of his daughter Aarushi, there is no likelihood of him and his dentist wife and their family friend Dr Anita Durani getting back onto the doctors’ rolls at the Fortis Hospital in Noida, an official said.

”They were not employed in the hospital. They were visiting doctors and there are no plans to bring them back,” a hospital official said, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media on the subject.

Fortis had removed Dr Talwar and his wife, as also Dr Anita Durani, from its panel of doctors in the wake of Aarushi Talwar’s killing on May 16. Dr Talwar was arrested on May 23 and the CBI cleared him on July 11, saying there was no evidence to link him to the crime.

The Talwars also had a private clinic at their Jal Vayu Vihar residence in Noida, where dentists Anita and her husband Praful Durani used to work.

Aarushi, 14, was found dead on May 16 in the Jal Vayu Vihar home. The police initially suspected the family’s domestic help Hemraj but retracted after his body was found on the terrace of the building a day later.

The CBI now says that Talwar’s medical assistant Krishna and two domestic helps of the area, Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal, were behind the twin murders.

New Delhi: In what is being seen as the first sign of revolt within the Left, West Bengal Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs Subhas Chakraborty backed Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and said he should not quit as the Speaker before the trust vote in Parliament.

Chakraborty also said that the CPI-M should not vote with the BJP on the Indo-US nuclear deal as “voting with the saffron party will harm our party’s interests”.

“We can’t be equated with BJP to fight American imperialism. This is my own view and my own understanding and everyone has the right to have his view. I agree with Somnath Chaterjee’s view and I have given my view to my party,” Chakraborty added.

Meanwhile, amid mounting pressure from within the Left, Chatterjee had a prolonged meeting with the Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu who is understood to have advised him to abide by the party line.

After the 50-minute meeting between Basu and Chatterjee, party insiders said that the former West Bengal chief minister played the role of a crisis manager persuading the Speaker to follow the party as the Left parties had already withdrawn support to the UPA Government.

Chatterjee’s name was given by CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat as one of the 44 MPs who were withdrawing support to the Government. But the Speaker made it clear that if he is forced to resign from his post, then he will give up his Lok Sabha membership as well.

In a statement released recently, Chatterjee had claimed that the Speaker doesn’t belong to any political party. In fact CNN-IBN has learnt that he is upset with the inclusion of his name without his consent.

He has already announced that this will be his last election and so he doesn’t want to end his parliamentary career on a bitter note. He is also believed to be upset with his party colleagues for not backing him during the presidential polls, when he was keen on contesting.

Left launches nationwide protests

The Left parties launched their nationwide protest on Monday against the UPA Government. A rally is being held in Delhi and the next leg of the campaign will be in Chennai on July 16.

Rallies will also be held in other parts of the country, including the Left-ruled states of Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal.

Apart from the Indo-US nuclear deal, the campaign will highlight the failures of the UPA Government to control prices and meet promises under the Common Minimum Programme. The protest is being seen as the beginning of the Left parties campaign for General Elections.

At a Left protest rally in Delhi, Karat listed the reasons for his party’s withdrawal of support to the UPA. He feared the nuclear deal would make India “a junior partner of the US.”

“We are not in favour of India becoming junior partner of America. On the directions of USA we have gone against Iran. All USA-based multinationals will enter India after this deal. They will enter all primary sectors of the economy,” Karat warned.

Meanwhile, Left leader AB Bardhan said, “The Government is desperate to win the trust vote and is wooing small parties and indulging in horse trading.”

New Delhi, Jul 14 (PTI) The Left parties today launched a nationwide campaign to explain to people the reasons that prompted them to withdraw support to the UPA Government which, they alleged, “failed” to keep promises due to its “obsession” with the nuclear deal.
Top Left leaders addressed a meeting here where they cited the UPA’s “failures, including rising prices and inflation, surrendering of national interest, and unkept promises with regard to the Common Minimum Programme (CMP)”.

The leaders “vigorously” attacked the government for its “refusal” to take appropriate steps to tackle the “runaway” inflation and “back-breaking” price rise.

The campaign was launched to explain to people the reasons for withdrawing support besides “explaining the UPA’s pro-American and anti-people policies which are resulting in price rise and other problems,” CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat said.

The Left parties are trying to rally other democratic and secular forces “who do not want either the Congress or BJP to be the only alternative”.

In the course of the campaign, he said the Left will also place before the people an alternative to meet energy requirements for development and for putting an end to the economic policies pursued by the Government which are “harmful to farmers, rural poor, workers and other sections”.

Karat said the Government and the Congress wanted to fulfill their promise to US President George W Bush. “It is their primary aim and not tackling inflation or price rise.” PTI

WASHINGTON: Pakistan on Sunday rejected India’s claim that its spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence, was behind the suicide attack on its embassy in Kabul last week, and said it had no interest in whipping up that kind of an environment.

National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan had on Saturday claimed that India had a “fair amount” of intelligence inputs about Pakistan’s involvement in last week’s suicide attack on its embassy in Kabul.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said relations between Islamabad and New Delhi were improving and the country had nothing to gain by curtailing it.

“On an even keel”

“No, I think Pakistan … [relations?] are on the mend. They are on a very even keel. They are improving. I’ve had very good interaction in Delhi. The Foreign Minister of India was in Pakistan. We are moving in the right direction. And we have nothing to gain by creating that environment,” Mr. Qureshi told CNN’s Late Edition.

“… I want to assure you that Pakistan is doing whatever it can to be supportive. We feel that we have interest in a peaceful and stable Afghanistan. It is in our enlightened self interest check the cross-border movement in order to have peace.”

People for peace

Earlier, he told The Washington Post that Pakistan wanted “the air of mistrust” removed. He said the people of the two countries had outpaced the governments in the desire for normalisation of bilateral ties. — PTI

Nirupama Subramanian reports from Islamabad:

Defence Minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar, told the Express News, a private television channel, that while it was “inappropriate” of India to make such an allegation “without any proof,” it would not have any effect on the India-Pakistan peace process.

Mr. Narayanan’s remarks came on a day when the U.S. also ramped up pressure on Pakistan, reportedly making a similar charge that Pakistani security agencies were backing Taliban and Al Qaeda.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen arrived in Pakistan on Saturday in what seemed to be an unscheduled visit, and apparently did some tough talking in his meeting with Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

The News reported that Admiral Mullen made the one-day visit to share evidence of American claims that “responsible elements within the country’s security agencies were giving comprehensive support to Taliban and Al Qaeda elements.”

According to the report, the evidence shared by the U.S. official, who was accompanied by CIA officials in his meetings, was “non-specific,” and the Pakistan government “refuted it using specific facts.”

According to a report in the Dawn, Admiral Mullen conveyed Washington’s growing frustration with Pakistan’s inability, or unwillingness, to act decisively against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants hiding in “safe havens” in the tribal areas in the north-west frontier, from where they are known to mount cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

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Sources have said that the Congress wants Somnath Chatterjee to stay on as the Speaker of the house, whereas, the Left is still gunning for his resignation.

Congress leader and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee conveyed this sentiment to veteran leader Jyoti Basu on Sunday when he met him ahead of Basu’s meeting with Somnath.

The Congress leader also met with the Speaker on Friday. That was the same day when CPM general secretary Prakash Karat had said that the speaker should quit his post and subsequently Politburo members were roped in to request Basu to persuade the speaker to step down.

Even after the meeting on Sunday, Somnath appears reluctant to quit as Speaker and no final decision has been taken yet.

Sources have said that the resignation is unlikely to come on Monday.

There is much intrigue and various stories doing the round in the political circles.

Kabul: A week after a suicide bomb attack took place near the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon will be visiting the city on Sunday to reassure the Afghanistan government that India will not cot down in the face of terrorism and will expand its humanitarian and development aid to Afghanistan.

The National Security Secretariat of the Afghanistan government has told CNN-IBN that the best way to respond to Pakistan’s efforts to destabilise the growing India-Afghanistan strategic partnership is to strengthen India’s presence in Afghanistan.

National Security Advisor M K Narayanan has reaffirmed the Afghan government view saying that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is responsible for the bombing.

Both governments have now decided that the best response to the ISI is to expand, deepen and strengthen India’s presence in and strategic partnership with Afghanistan.

“We run a massive capacity development programme in Afghanistan — the biggest campaign being run for Afghanistan by any country. It is also the biggest campaign that India runs for any country,” Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Jayant Prasad said.

Several Afghan students are the beneficiaries of India’s capacity development programme. They have been accepted for admission in the University of Pune. But the attack on the Embassy destroyed their official documents.

The Indian Embassy has told CNN-IBN that all student visas will be processed from Monday and hopefully the Afghan students will soon be in studying in India.

It is expected that Menon’s visit to Kabul will eventually enable hundreds of more Afghan students to study in universities across India.