WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama pushed job creation to the top of his agenda and vowed not to abandon his struggling healthcare overhaul after a political setback that raised doubts about his leadership. With the economy still weak and unemployment at a painful 10 percent, “Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010,” Obama told Congress in his annual State of the Union address on Wednesday.

Obama, who inherited a financial crisis and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the Bush administration, admitted he had made mistakes and that his first year in office had been a difficult one. But he promised not to give up in his efforts to change the way that Washington works and push through his ambitious agenda for financial reforms, healthcare, energy and climate change, even though many Democrats fear losing their seats in November congressional elections.

“We don’t quit. I don’t quit,” he told Congress, split largely along...

LONDON - The Kabul government yesterday invited Taliban leaders to a peace council of elders in a step toward resolving the Afghanistan conflict and called on Saudi Arabia to help in the quest for peace. A government spokesman said the Taliban would be asked to take part in the peace council, or loya jirga, expected to be held early this year.

“We wish them to come,” spokesman Hamid Elmi told Reuters at a 60-nation conference in London on Afghanistan. The conference was also attended by Romania’s Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi, who was expected to present the country’s contribution to international efforts of maintaining security and assuring stability in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the conference his government would set up a national council for peace, reconciliation and reintegration followed by a peace jirga. “We must reach out to all of our countrymen, especially our disenchanted brothers, who are not part of...

DAVOS - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton appealed yesterday for global business leaders to help Haiti rebuild after the earthquake which devastated its coastal capital and killed as many as 200,000 people. Clinton, the United Nations special envoy for Haiti, said there was an immediate need for cash to help fund food and water distribution and to provide safe and sanitary shelter for people made homeless in the Jan. 12 disaster.

“There are serious unmet food and water needs. Part of it is the distribution system does not exist,” Clinton told the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. “Right now we need cash more than anything else,” he said, adding there was also a need for pickup trucks to help distribute supplies. “I need 100 yesterday.”

But he also appealed for long term investment to help the country recover. Citing what he said was a quadrupling of Rwanda’s economy in the decade following its 1994 genocide,...

Former French PM cleared over Sarkozy smear plot

Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was cleared yesterday of being part of a conspiracy to smear Nicolas Sarkozy and sabotage his campaign to become president in 2007. The verdict in the so-called “Clearstream case” represents a sharp blow to Sarkozy, who had made no secret of his enmity towards the aristocratic Villepin when the two served together in the government of ex-President Jacques Chirac. Villepin, who became prime minister in 2005 after stints as foreign and interior minister, had been accused of using faked documents to link Sarkozy to a corruption probe as the two men angled to succeed the ageing Chirac. He always denied the charges and said repeatedly that he was a victim of a vendetta by Sarkozy, who won power in the 2007 election while Villepin battled the allegations of wrongdoing.

Iran hangs two people in first unrest executions

Iran executed two...

WASHINGTON - As many as 2,000 additional troops - including a number of U.S. forces - may be headed to Afghanistan in the coming weeks under a plan being proposed by Gen. David Petraeus, according to CNN. Petraeus has not commented publicly on the need for more troops, but a U.S. defense official and a senior NATO official directly familiar with his thinking and the entire matter have confirmed details to CNN. The Petraeus proposal for more troops has been briefed to NATO officials behind closed doors.

According to the NATO source, it calls for an additional 2,000 troops including at least 750 personnel to serve as trainers for Afghan forces. The trainers specifically would work to teach Afghan units how to support their operations in the field. The balance of the forces would work largely to counter the still significant threat posed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Another NATO official told CNN “it’s highly likely” many of the additional forces will be U.S. troops....

Moldova poll fails, ruling Alliance on back foot

Moldova’s pro-Western leaders pondered their next move on Monday after a referendum designed to break a political deadlock in the ex-Soviet republic failed due to poor turnout, dealing them a humiliating setback. As opposition Communists in the country of 3.5 million revelled, one leader in the ruling four-party Alliance for European Integration conceded that the referendum, called to decide on whether the country should switch to direct presidential elections, had been “a tactical error”. “Some of the members (of the Alliance) were too quick to believe results of opinion polls that showed that 60-70 percent of the electorate would take part,” Marian Lupu, a centre-left leader in the Alliance, told Reuters. “It was a tactical error by the Alliance.”

Guatemala landslides kill dozens, toll seen rising

A massive landslide buried a crowd trying to dig out a bus from deep mud on Sunday, killing at...

CHISINAU - Moldovans voted on Sunday on whether to elect their president directly, a change that Moldova’s West-leaning ruling coalition says would bring an end to chronic political paralysis. Opinion polls suggest there will a strong vote in favour of ditching the present system, under which the head of state is elected by parliament, despite a call by the opposition Communists for a boycott of the referendum.

Moldova has had no full-time president for 18 months, with its ruling four-party Alliance for European Integration unable to muster enough parliamentary votes to install a head of state despite ousting the Communists from power in July 2009. The Alliance says this has held up reforms that are urgently needed to bring the ex-Soviet state, one of Europe’s poorest, into the mainstream. It promises direct elections for president and parliament on Nov. 14 if the referendum succeeds. Moldova, a country of 3.5 million people tucked between Romania and Ukraine, has an...

JERUSALEM - A peace deal with the Palestinians will require a creative, new approach to issues that have defied resolution in past negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. Netanyahu, back from a Washington peace summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at which they agreed to try to reach a framework accord within a year, gave no hint in public remarks to his cabinet about any new ideas he may have in mind.

The talks, relaunched on Thursday amid scepticism in Israel and the Palestinian territories, face an early hurdle when a partial Israeli moratorium on housing starts in West Bank settlements expires on Sept. 26. Netanyahu has resisted extending the freeze, and Abbas has threatened to quit the negotiations if construction resumes. Palestinians see settlements on land Israel occupied in a 1967 war as obstacles to the state they seek.

For the talks to succeed, “we will have to learn the lessons of 17 years of experience from...

Concerned with the recent outbreak of riots over food prices in the African nation of Mozambique, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced Saturday it will hold a special meeting this month to discuss rising wheat prices, CNN reported. FAO officials, food experts and government representatives are scheduled to meet in Rome on Sept. 24 to find ways to ease the price fluctuation affecting grain markets, U.N. officials said in a statement.

Studies show that wheat prices soared in August, the biggest monthly rise in almost a year, officials said. They want to prevent a food crisis like ones in 2007 and 2008 that sparked riots in several nations. Russia’s restricted sale of grains, resulting from this summer’s persistent drought, caused wheat prices to go up by five percent in August, the U.N. agency said. Russia recently banned grain exports. Higher sugar and oilseed prices also contributed to the international food price hike, FAO officials...

MADRID - The Basque separatist group ETA has decided to stop carrying out armed attacks, Basque-language newspaper Gara said on its website on Sunday. Gara did not make clear whether the ceasefire was permanent or temporary.

Interior ministry officials declined to comment on the statement by ETA, which has been responsible for around 850 deaths in a four-decade fight to carve out an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France. In a video posted on the Gara site, three figures were shown dressed in black, their faces covered with white cloths with holes cut out for their eyes.

They were seated at a table under the emblem of the separatist group and next to the Basque flag, and the central figure made a statement in the Basque language. “ETA makes it known that for several months now it has taken the decision not to carry out armed attacks,” said a transcript of the statement. ETA has been crippled by the arrest of leading members in recent years....

Suicide bomber kills five in southern Russia

At least five people were killed and 35 wounded on Sunday when a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a military camp in Russia’s southern region of Dagestan, security officials said. The bomber tried to drive a Lada car containing about 50 kg of explosives onto a firing range where the 136th Motorcycle Brigade had set up camp outside the town of Buynaksk, about 50 km west of the local capital Makhachkala. But soldiers blocked the bomber’s path with a military truck, preventing what investigators said would have been a much more deadly attack had the bomber reached tents where hundreds of soldiers were sleeping.

7.1 quake hits New Zealand

Authorities declared a state of emergency after a major earthquake hit New Zealand’s second biggest city early on Saturday, bringing down power lines, ripping up roads and wrecking building facades, but authorities reported no deaths. The...

WASHINGTON - With a diplomatic push from U.S. President Barack Obama, Israeli and Palestinian leaders started direct peace talks on Thursday overshadowed by scepticism on all sides and violence in the volatile West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were to meet at the State Department, relaunching talks after a 20-month hiatus and seeking a deal within one year that will set up an independent Palestinian state side-by-side with a secure Israel.

Obama, who has staked considerable political capital on the Washington talks during a pivotal U.S. congressional election year, urged both sides to grasp the chance for peace after separate meetings at the White House on Wednesday. “This moment of opportunity may not soon come again. They cannot afford to let it slip away,” Obama said after a day of personal diplomacy on a problem that has confounded generations of U.S. leaders.

But opponents of a settlement and the...

TIRASPOL - Shunned by the world community and held at arms length even by its main ally Russia, Moldova’s tiny rebel Transdniester defiantly marked 20 years of unilateral independence in full Soviet style on Thursday. Tanks rolled down the capital’s main thoroughfare in a show of sabre rattling while veteran separatist leader Igor Smirnov praised Russia for keeping its troops there as a guarantor of stability and attacked “nationalist fascists” in Moldova.

A ragged strip of land running down Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine, Transdniester, population 600,000, is not recognised internationally by any country. But Smirnov, who has led the territory since it broke with Chisinau in 1990, said the examples of Kosovo and Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia showed that time was on Transdniester’s side. “We have the attributes to be recognised,” he said.

Analysts see no breakthrough in prospect to end the Transdniester conundrum - one of four “frozen” conflicts left...

BRUSSELS - The European Commission has asked France to prove its expulsion of Roma migrants meets EU rules, stepping into a debate on balancing domestic policies in the bloc with protecting the rights of marginalised groups. In a preliminary report this week, three of the Commission’s 27 commissioners questioned whether France was meeting the EU’s legal requirements when sending Roma migrants back to Romania and Bulgaria. But the report withheld any judgment for now.

In the past month France has expelled 1,000 Roma from illegal camps around the country, bringing the total this year to nearly 9,000, as President Nicolas Sarkozy pursues a security clampdown at a time of falling popularity. The expulsions have left the EU’s executive Commission with a dilemma as it struggles with the need to give member states room to act, while ensuring the bloc’s policies on protecting minorities and the free movement of people are respected.

“The Commission is seeking detailed...

LAHORE - Pakistan tightened security in the eastern city of Lahore on Thursday after three bomb attacks killed 33 people and wounded 171 and pressured the U.S.-backed government already overwhelmed by floods. The blasts which hit a Shi’ite procession on Wednesday bore all the hallmarks of pro-Taliban insurgents, who have carried out sectarian violence designed to destabilise the government. “Security has been tightened in the city to prevent any such incident. We had called the (paramilitary) rangers after the blasts last night, and they are on high alert and can be called again any time if needed,” Sajjad Bhutta, Lahore’s top administration official, told Reuters. The government may face renewed militant violence as it tries to manage the country’s worst floods, and dull expected long-term economic pain caused by them, security analysts say.

The floods struck just as the army said it had made progress in the war against the al Qaeda-linked Sunni Taliban. Reflecting the...

Police end hostage drama at US Discovery Channel

U.S. police shot and killed a man who took three people hostage, waving a gun and apparently fitted out with explosives, in the headquarters of the Discovery Channel near Washington on Wednesday. Officers who had been watching the hostage drama on a building security camera crept in while police negotiated with the emotional gunman and shot him when he pointed his pistol at one of the three men he held hostage. The man, named by a U.S. law enforcement official as James Lee, had been arrested before for protesting against Discovery Channel over environmental issues. The incident caused chaos in Silver Spring, Maryland, a shopping and office district and commuter hub on the edge of the U.S. capital.

S.Africa state workers reject offer, take to streets

Striking South African state workers staged a protest march on Thursday after rejecting a revised wage offer aimed at ending their three-week strike...

WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD - President Barack Obama declared an end to the seven-year U.S. combat mission in Iraq on Tuesday and promised recession-weary Americans “my central responsibility” now is to repair the U.S. economy. Obama, who inherited the war from President George W. Bush and is fighting another in Afghanistan, said he had fulfilled a 2008 campaign promise to end U.S. combat operations in Iraq and declared the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for their security. “Now, it is time to turn the page,” Obama said in an Oval Office address, speaking from the same desk Bush had used to declare the 2003 start of the war.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Iraqis their country “today is sovereign and independent.” But many Iraqis, who have seen at least 100,000 of their countrymen killed since the 2003 invasion, are apprehensive as U.S. military might is scaled down, with violence continuing and efforts to form a new government stalemated six months after an...

WASHINGTON - Israel’s defence minister said on Wednesday the Jewish state would be willing to hand over parts of Jerusalem in peace talks with the Palestinians to be launched by U.S. President Barack Obama. A flare-up of violence in the Palestinian West Bank and a deadlock over Jewish settlements there loom as potential deal-breakers for Obama, who will host Israeli and Palestinian leaders for dinner at the White House in Washington.

Obama brought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas together for face-to-face negotiations after months of U.S.-mediated indirect talks. But he faces deep skepticism about his chances of success. Defence minister Ehud Barak’s rare comments about the need to partition Jerusalem, which is at the heart of the conflict, could signal Netanyahu’s willingness to divide the holy city in any final peace deal with Palestinians. Netanyahu has publicly balked at ceding the eastern, Arab part of the city that Israel...

MOSCOW - Russian police detained more than 100 people including prominent opponents of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at anti-Kremlin protests on Tuesday, after Putin said demonstrators without permits could expect harsh treatment. In Moscow, police detained opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and dozens of other protesters who defied authorities by gathering on a central square declared off-limits last week, shouting “Shame!” and “Russia without Putin!”

Police dragged protesters through the crowd on Triumph Square and shoved them into buses, carrying some who tried to resist or twisting their arms behind their backs. About 70 people were detained in Moscow, police spokesman Viktor Biryukov said at the scene. In St. Petersburg, some 50 people were detained on the main street, Nevsky Prospekt, and 15 more at a protest on the imperial-era capital’s Palace Square.

Opposition leaders and rights activists have been converging on Moscow’s Triumph Square on the 31st of each...

Sweden reopens WikiLeaks founder rape investigation

Sweden’s chief prosecutor said on Wednesday she was reopening a preliminary investigation into rape charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that a lower official had withdrawn two weeks ago. Neither Assange, who has denied the charges, nor his lawyer could be immediately reached for comment. WikiLeaks published more than 70,000 secret military files on Afghanistan in July in what U.S. officials have called one of the biggest security breaches in U.S. military history. Assange has said he has been warned by Australian intelligence that he could face a campaign to discredit him after leaking the documents.

Azerbaijan, Karabakh trade blame over deadly clash

Azerbaijan and the rebel mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh traded blame for a deadly clash on their frontline on Tuesday in which Azerbaijan said two of its soldiers had died. The Azeri Defence Ministry said in a statement that two...

WARSAW - Poland is marking the 30th anniversary of the Gdansk accords, which gave rise to the Solidarity trade union - the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. Various events marking the historic occasion were being held around Poland, centered on the Baltic coast towns where Solidarity had its birth, according to Radio Free Europe.

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski set the tone for the celebrations in a speech he gave on August 29 in the port of Szczecin. “On this special day, we can face all these people with pride and satisfaction and pay a tribute to their heroic fight for the abolition of the system and commemorate with pride that the fight was not only successful in knocking down communism, but it also established the base for an effective and wise reform,” he said.

The Gdansk accords were signed on August 31, 1980, between the communist government and striking workers along the Baltic coast. The accords allowed a free trade union, the right to...

SEOUL - China pressed regional powers on Tuesday to restart talks on ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and Seoul offered aid to its destitute neighbour despite a new round of U.S. sanctions against Pyongyang. In a move that could ease tensions on the peninsula, South Korea made its first large-scale offer of humanitarian aid to the North since the sinking of one of its warships in March.

Seoul offered 10 billion won (USD 8.4 M) to North Korea after heavy rains in July and August in its northern and eastern provinces forced thousands from their homes and put farmland under water. Seoul cut off most of its ties with Pyongyang after accusing the North of torpedoing the Cheonan corvette and demanded an apology. North Korea says it did not carry out the attack, and has told its only major ally China it is committed to denuclearising the peninsula and wants to resume the aid-for-disarmament talks.

China is lobbying neighbours to sign up for renewed talks, and on...

A recent blunder of Bulgarian Defence Minister Anyu Angelov related to the US missile defence in Europe has led to Syria threatening to break its diplomatic relations with Bulgaria, Novinite reported. This highly problematic statement made by Angelov, together with two other blunders, are very likely to lead Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to replace him, reported Trud Daily citing sources from the government and the ruling party GERB.

Speaking on private cable TV channel Pro.bg on June 3, 2010, Bulgaria’s Defense Minister Anyu Angelov declared that the country must join the US missile shield in Europe because of the threats it faces from certain Middle Eastern countries. “The threat comes not only from Iran, which clearly has medium-range missile technologies. But we also got information that Syria is developing such technologies as well,” Gen. Angelov declared largely suggesting that Syria might offensive plans as an enemy of Bulgaria.

The gaffe caused a diplomatic...

Fire bombs thrown at Russian embassy in Minsk

An unknown assailant threw two fire bombs at the Russian embassy in Minsk late on Monday, in an attack that hurt nobody but destroyed an embassy car, a Belarussian Emergencies Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. Vitaly Novitsky said the motive for the attack and the identity of the perpetrator were unknown. Belarussian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Savinykh condemned the attack as a hooligan stunt aimed at hurting Belarusian-Russian relations, the Belapan news agency reported.

Chile begins drilling mine rescue shaft

Engineers in Chile have begun drilling the rescue shaft through which they hope to eventually free the 33 men trapped in a collapsed gold mine, BBC News reported. The miners have been stuck 700m underground for the past three weeks. Officials say it could take up to four months for the tunnel to be completed and the men to be winched out. The miners will have to clear thousands of...