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Three Afghans dead in new blast at U.S. base in Afghan east

Written By Bersemangat on Kamis, 27 Desember 2012 | 00.42

KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed three people in an attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan on Wednesday, the same base that is believed to be used by the CIA and which a suicide bomber attacked three years ago killing seven CIA employees.

The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the eastern town of Khost, saying they had sent a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives to the base.

"The target was those who serve Americans at that base," said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Afghanistan's NATO-led force said the bomber did not get into the base nor breach its perimeter. Police said the three dead were Afghans who were outside the base, which is beside a military airport.

The al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, widely regarded as the most dangerous U.S. foe in Afghanistan, is active in Khost province, which is on the Pakistani border.

After more than a decade of war, Taliban insurgents are still able to strike strategic military targets, and launch high-profile attacks in the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere.

Three years ago, an al Qaeda-linked Jordanian double-agent killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer in a suicide bombing at the same base in Khost, known as Forward Operating Base Chapman.

It was the second deadliest attack in CIA history.

Afghan police official General Abdul Qasim Baqizoy, the Khost police chief, said no CIA agents were hurt on Wednesday.

Afghan authorities are scrambling to improve security across the country before the U.S. combat mission ends in 2014.

Besides pressure from the Taliban, U.S.-led NATO forces also face a rising number of so-called insider attacks, in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on Western troops they are supposed to be working with.

On Monday, an Afghan policewoman killed a U.S. police adviser at the Kabul police headquarters, raising troubling questions about the direction of the war.

It appeared to be the first time that a woman member of Afghanistan's security forces carried out such an attack.

On Tuesday, Afghan officials said the woman has an Iranian passport and moved to Afghanistan 10 years ago. There was no suggestion that Iran was involved in the attack on the American.

Officials suspect she may have been recruited by al Qaeda or the Taliban, and had intended to also kill Afghan police officials.

(Reporting by Elyas Wahdat; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel)


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Kazakh rescuers find flight recorder after military plane crash

ALMATY (Reuters) - Rescue teams have recovered a flight recorder from a plane which crashed in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, killing all 27 people on board in the country's worst military air disaster since independence.

The twin-engine Antonov An-72 transport jet disappeared from radar screens at about 1900 local time (1300 GMT) as it was circling in a raging blizzard, trying to land at the city of Shymkent, the capital of the South Kazakhstan Region.

It crashed into an open-cast mine, littering the area with mangled, burning fragments.

The plane belonged to the border troops of Kazakhstan's KNB security service. Those killed included the commander of the country's border guards, Turganbek Stambekov, and his wife.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered a national day of mourning on Thursday, his press service said.

"Most probably, the black box (flight recorder) will give us a clue about what caused this catastrophe," KNB chief Nurtai Abykayev told a news conference in Shymkent, according to local media.

"Special commissions that are investigating will look into various possible causes. These can include weather conditions, the human factor or the plane's technical condition. Anything."

The Soviet-designed plane, which can take off from rough gravel runways just 800 meters long, is widely considered to be a reliable and sturdy workhorse of the air forces of several former Soviet states.

The one that crashed near Shymkent was made in 1990, and in November it underwent maintenance at the factory in Ukraine that built it, after which it had accumulated just 40 hours of flight time, including 30 take-offs and landings, local media said.

The plane was carrying officers from Kazakhstan's southern border protection district who had attended an annual meeting in the capital Astana.

Oil-producer Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest economy, has seen accidents with smaller military aircraft and helicopters during the 21 years of its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

GRIEF AND ANGER

Kazakhstan is predominantly Muslim and according to Islamic tradition the first funerals of those killed in the crash should have been held on Wednesday. But this was not possible because medical experts still had to identify badly mutilated bodies, Abykayev said.

Several distraught relatives could be seen near the cordoned-off crash site on Wednesday. They did not try to conceal their anger and frustration.

"They should have allowed us to take away the remains and bury them," a middle-aged woman, whose brother was among the killed officers, told Kazakhstan's Channel 7 television.

"My brother left four children. They must know where their father died so they can bring flowers here," she said. "He had great plans which will never be realized. He aspired to rise to the rank of general."

Thursday will be the second time Kazakhstan, a vast nation of 17 million people, will observe a day of national mourning this year. In June, the country mourned 14 border guards and a herder killed by a fellow serviceman at a remote border post near China's border.

In one of the world's worst civilian air disasters, an Ilyushin IL-76 cargo plane from Shymkent collided in midair with a Saudia Boeing 747 near New Delhi in November 1996, killing all 349 aboard both planes.

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Pravin Char)


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Japan Abe taps allies for cabinet, pledges deflation fight

TOKYO (Reuters) - New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed on Wednesday to battle deflation and a strong yen, and bolster ties with the United States as he kicked off a second administration committed to reviving the economy while coping with a rising China.

A hawk on security matters, Abe, 58, has promised aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan and big fiscal spending by the debt-laden government to slay deflation and weaken the yen to make Japanese exports more competitive.

Critics worry, however, that he will pay too little heed to reforms needed to generate growth despite an ageing, shrinking population and reform a creaking social welfare system.

The grandson of a former prime minister, Abe has staged a stunning comeback five years after abruptly resigning as premier in the wake of a one-year term troubled partly by scandals in his cabinet and public outrage over lost pension records.

"With the strength of my entire cabinet, I will implement bold monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy that encourages private investment, and with these three policy pillars, achieve results," Abe told a news conference after parliament voted him in as Japan's seventh prime minister in six years.

Abe's long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) surged back to power in this month's election, three years after a crushing defeat at the hands of the novice Democratic Party of Japan.

CLOSE ALLIES, PARTY RIVALS

Abe appointed a cabinet of close allies who share his conservative views in key posts, but leavened the line-up with LDP rivals to provide ballast and fend off criticism of cronyism that dogged his first administration.

Former prime minister Taro Aso, 72, was named finance minister and also received the financial services portfolio.

Ex-trade and industry minister Akira Amari becomes minister for economic revival, heading a new panel tasked with coming up with growth strategies such as deregulation.

Policy veteran Toshimitsu Motegi, as trade minister, will be tasked with formulating energy policy in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year.

Loyal Abe backer Yoshihide Suga was appointed chief cabinet secretary, a key post combining the job of top government spokesman with responsibility for coordinating among ministries.

Others who share Abe's agenda to revise the pacifist constitution and rewrite Japan's wartime history with a less apologetic tone were also given posts, including conservative lawmaker Hakubun Shimomura as education minister.

"These are really LDP right-wingers and close friends of Abe," said Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano. "It really doesn't look very fresh at all."

Fiscal hawk Sadakazu Tanigaki, whom Abe replaced as LDP leader in September, becomes justice minister while two rivals who ran unsuccessfully in that party race - Yoshimasa Hayashi and Nobuteru Ishihara - got the agriculture and environment/nuclear crisis portfolios respectively.

CENTRAL BANK THREATENED

Business leaders welcomed the new cabinet, but the biggest corporate lobby, Keidanren, urged the government to take part in the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, Kyodo news agency said. The LDP has been wary of the pact given the political clout of the heavily protected farm sector.

The yen has weakened about 9.8 percent against the dollar since Abe was elected LDP leader in September. On Wednesday, it hit a 20-month low of 85.38 yen against the greenback on expectations of aggressive monetary policy easing.

Abe has threatened to revise a law guaranteeing the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) independence if it refuses to set a 2 percent inflation target.

BOJ minutes released on Wednesday showed the central bank was already pondering policy options in November, concerned about looming risks to the economy. The BOJ stood pat at its November rate review meeting, but eased this month in response to intensifying pressure from Abe.

Abe also promised during the election campaign to take a tough stance in territorial rows with China and South Korea over separate chains of tiny islands, while placing priority on strengthening Japan's alliance with the United States.

On Wednesday, he repeated his resolve to firm up ties with Washington and his intention to protect "the people's lives, Japanese territory and its beautiful oceans".

China expressed hope that Abe's cabinet would work with Beijing to improve ties, but reiterated that the disputed isles were its territory. "We hope Japan works with China with sincerity and makes real efforts to solve relevant problems through dialogue and negotiations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying told a news conference in Beijing.

Abe named low-profile lawmakers to the foreign and defense portfolios. Itsunori Onodera, 52, who was senior vice foreign minister in Abe's first cabinet, becomes defense minister while Fumio Kishida, 55, a former state minister for issues related to Okinawa island - host to the bulk of U.S. forces in Japan - was appointed to the top diplomatic post. Unlike many others in the cabinet, Kishida has an image as something of a diplomatic dove.

Abe, who hails from a wealthy political family, made his first overseas visit to China to repair chilly ties when he took office in 2006, but has said his first trip this time will be to the United States.

He may, however, put contentious issues that could upset key trade partner China and fellow-U.S. ally South Korea on the backburner to concentrate on boosting the economy, now in its fourth recession since 2000, ahead of an election for parliament's upper house in July.

The LDP and its small ally, the New Komeito party, won a two-thirds majority in the 480-seat lower house in the December 16 election. That allows the lower house to enact bills rejected by the upper house, where the LDP-led block lacks a majority.

But the process is cumbersome, so the LDP is keen to win a majority in the upper house to end the parliamentary deadlock that has plagued successive governments since 2007.

"Trust in our party has not yet been fully restored and I feel we are still viewed with critically by the people, so I want to get results as soon as possible to restore trust," Abe told the news conference.

($1 = 84.7950 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Stanley White, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Kaori Kaneko and Chris Meyers and by Terril Yue Jones in Beijing; Editing by Dean Yates)


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Iraq Sunnis block trade routes in protest against PM Maliki

ANBAR, Iraq (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims blocked Iraq's main trade route to neighboring Syria and Jordan in a fourth day of demonstrations on Wednesday against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The massive show of force marks an escalation in protests that erupted last week after troops detained the bodyguards of Sunni Finance Minister Rafaie Esawi, threatening to plunge Iraq deeper into political turmoil.

"The people want to bring down the regime," chanted thousands of protesters in the Sunni stronghold of Anbar, echoing the slogan used in popular revolts that ended in the toppling of the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Waving the old flag of Iraq that was changed after Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, protesters sat in the road, choking off the main trade route between Iraq, Jordan and Syria.

Another smaller protest was held in the city of Samarra in the predominantly Sunni province of Salahuddin, next to Anbar.

The move against Esawi's guards came hours after President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who has mediated among Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish factions, left for Germany for treatment for a stroke that could end his steadying influence over Iraqi politics.

The arrest was reminiscent of Maliki's move to arrest Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who he accused of running death squads, just as U.S. troops withdrew in December 2011.

Iraq's fragile power-sharing government has since lurched from crisis to crisis and the conflict in Syria risks reigniting sectarian tensions that brought the country to the brink of all-out civil war in 2005-2007.

Addressing the protesters, Esawi said the detention of his guards was politically motivated and that Maliki was deliberately provoking strife.

"It is enough! The country should not be run by such a mentality," he said, to cries of "God is greatest".

Maliki has sought to play his rivals off against one another to strengthen his alliances in Iraq's complex political landscape before provincial elections next year and a parliamentary vote in 2014.

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, another rival of Maliki, offered his support to the protests in a statement, rejecting what he described as Maliki's sectarian policies.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Jon Hemming)


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Egypt's contentious Islamist constitution becomes law

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi signed into law a new constitution shaped by his Islamist allies, a bitterly contested document which he insists will help end political turmoil and allow him to focus on fixing the economy.

Anxiety about a deepening political and economic crisis has gripped Egypt in past weeks, with many people rushing to buy dollars and withdraw their savings from banks. The Egyptian pound tumbled on Wednesday to its weakest level against the U.S. currency in almost eight years.

The new constitution, which the liberal opposition says betrays Egypt's 2011 revolution by dangerously mixing religion and politics, has polarized the Arab world's most populous nation and prompted occasionally violent protest on the streets.

The presidency said on Wednesday that Mursi had formally approved the constitution the previous evening, shortly after results showed that Egyptians had backed it in a referendum.

The text won about 64 percent of the vote, paving the way for a new parliamentary election in about two months.

The charter states that the principles of sharia, Islamic law, are the main source of legislation and that Islamic authorities will be consulted on sharia - a source of concern to the Christian minority and others.

The referendum result marked yet another electoral victory for the Islamists since veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011, following parliamentary elections last year and the presidential vote that brought Mursi to power this year.

Mursi's government, which has accused opponents of damaging the economy by prolonging political upheaval, now faces the tough task of building a broad consensus as it prepares to impose austerity measures.

CRISIS ATMOSPHERE

The atmosphere of crisis deepened this week after the Standard & Poor's agency downgraded Egypt's long-term credit rating and warned of a possible further cut. The government has imposed currency restrictions to reduce capital flight.

The pound traded as low as 6.1775 against the dollar on Wednesday, close to its all-time low of 6.26 hit on October 14, 2004, on concerns that the government might devalue or tighten restrictions on currency movements.

"All customers are rushing to buy dollars after the downgrading," said a dealer at a Cairo-based bank. "We'll have to wait to see how the market will operate with the U.S. dollar, because as you know there is a rush at the moment."

Keen to be seen as decisive, the government is now in talks with business figures, trade unions and other groups to highlight the need for tax increases to resolve the crisis.

Mursi has committed to such austerity measures to receive a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

However, Al-Mal newspaper quoted Planning Minister Ashraf al-Araby as saying the government would not implement the tax increases until it had completed the dialogue with different parts of society.

In Cairo's bustling centre, people openly expressed their frustration with economic instability as they went about their daily business.

"The country's going to the pits. Everything is a mess," Hamdy Hussein, a 61-year-old building janitor, said angrily. "It's worse than ever. Mubarak was better than now. People were living and there was security."

Ashraf Mohamed Kamal, 30, added: "The economic situation will be a mess in the next few years. It already is. People will get hungrier. People are now begging more."

TURMOIL CONTINUES

Mursi, catapulted into power by his Islamist allies this year, believes adopting the constitution quickly and holding the vote for a permanent new parliament will help to end the long period of turmoil and uncertainty that has wrecked the economy.

Mursi's government argues the constitution offers enough protection to all groups, and that many Egyptians are fed up with street protests that have prevented a return to normality and distracted the government from tackling the economy.

The charter gives Egypt's upper house of parliament, which is dominated by Islamists, full legislative powers until the vote for a new lower house is held.

While stressing the importance of political stability to heal the economy, Mursi's government has tried to play down the economic problems and appealed for unity despite the hardship.

"The government calls on the people not to worry about the country's economy," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mohamed Mahsoub told the upper house in a speech. "We are not facing an economic problem but a political one and it is affecting the economic situation. We therefore urge all groups, opponents and brothers, to achieve wide reconciliation and consensus."

Mursi is due to address the upper house on Saturday in a speech likely to be dominated by economic policy.

Sharpening people's concerns, the authorities imposed currency controls on Tuesday to prevent capital flight. Leaving or entering Egypt with more than $10,000 in cash is now banned.

Adding to the government's long list of worries, Communications Minister Hany Mahmoud has resigned citing his "inability to adapt to the government's working culture".

The opposition has condemned the new basic law as too Islamist, saying it could allow clerics to intervene in the lawmaking process and leave minority groups without proper legal protection. It said this month's vote was marred by major violations.

Nevertheless, major opposition groups have not called for new protests, suggesting that weeks of civil unrest over the constitution may be subsiding now that it has passed.

The United States, which provides $1.3 billion a year in military aid plus other support to Egypt and sees it as a pillar of security in the Middle East, called on Egyptian politicians to bridge divisions and on all sides to reject violence.

(Additional reporting by Patrick Werr; Writing by Maria Golovnina; editing by David Stamp)


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UAE says arrests cell planning attacks

DUBAI (Reuters) - Security forces in the United Arab Emirates have arrested a cell of UAE and Saudi Arabian citizens which was planning to carry out militant attacks in both countries and other states, the official news agency WAM said on Wednesday.

The U.S.-allied UAE, a federation of seven emirates and a major oil exporter, has been spared any attack by al Qaeda and other insurgency groups.

But some of its emirates have seen a rise in Islamist sentiment in recent years, and Dubai, a business and tourism hub cosmopolitan city that attracts many Westerners, could make an attractive target for Islamist militants, analysts say.

The arrested group had acquired materials and equipment for use in what WAM called terrorist operations.

"The security authorities in the UAE, in coordination with the related security parties in Saudi Arabia, announced the arrest of an organized cell from the deviant group that was planning to carry out actions against national security of both countries and some brotherly states," WAM said without elaborating.

The phrase "the deviant group" is often used by authorities in Saudi Arabia to describe al Qaeda members.

In August, Saudi authorities arrested a group of suspected al Qaeda-linked militants - mostly Yemeni nationals - in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has arrested thousands of suspected militants since the 2003-2006 attacks on residential compounds for foreign workers and on Saudi government facilities in which were dozens of people were killed.

The United States has poured aid into Yemen to stem the threat of attacks from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and to try to prevent any spillover of violence into Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.

In 2010, AQAP, a merger of al Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi branches, said it was behind a plot to send two parcel bombs to the United States. The bombs were intercepted in Britain and Dubai.

The UAE has escaped the upheaval that has shaken the Arab world but moved swiftly to stem any sign of political dissent by detaining more than 60 local Islamists this year over alleged threats to state security and links to a foreign group.

Those detainees, who belong to an Islamist group called al-Islah, have confessed to setting up a secret organization with an armed force whose aim was to take power and establish an Islamic state, local media reported in September. Islah denied the accusations.

Many of the detained Islamists come from the more religiously conservative northern emirates such as Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, which produced one of the September 11 hijackers.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Angus MacSwan)


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Berlusconi allies fire barbs at Monti, ending Christmas truce

ROME (Reuters) - Italian politicians resumed their bickering on Wednesday, with supporters of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi taking aim at his successor Mario Monti despite a Christmas call from the Pope for political peace.

Just before midnight at the end of Christmas Day, Monti tweeted: "Together, we saved Italy from disaster. Now we have to renew politics. Complaining won't help anything. Rolling up sleeves will. Let's rise to politics!"

That irked center-right supporters of Berlusconi, who resigned last year to let Monti take over and is now scrapping with center-left and pro-Monti centrist blocs ahead of elections due February 24-25.

"Monti did not save Italy, he merely reaped the merits of four year of work by Berlusconi", said Gianfranco Rotondi, a parliamentarian from Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party.

Anna Maria Bernini, also of the PDL, accused Monti of spouting "pure propaganda", adding: "It is shocking to see how a man can present himself as a savior after bringing the country to recession, taking all the merit (for successes) and attributing all the disasters to others."

The mud-slinging took place less than a day after Pope Benedict urged Italian politicians in a Christmas address to "favor the spirit of cooperation for the common good".

Monti resigned last week as promised after the budget was passed, and is staying on in a caretaker capacity until the formation of a new government after the elections. Although his exact plans for after the elections are not entirely clear, he is expected to remain influential.

Berlusconi has said it would be "immoral" for Monti to fight the election after governing as an unelected premier with the support of the main parties.

But not all of the center right opposes the prime minister. Italia Libera (A Free Italy), a group of 11 parliamentarians who have defected from Berlusconi's PDL, praised Monti's economic reform plans as "a Copernican revolution for those who are used to something that is as erosive and unproductive as the duel between forces for or against Berlusconi".

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Peter Graff)


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Mental illness, poverty haunted Afghan policewoman who killed American

KABUL (Reuters) - The Afghan policewoman suspected of killing a U.S. contractor at police headquarters in Kabul suffered from mental illness and was driven to suicidal despair by poverty, her children told Reuters on Wednesday.

The woman was identified by authorities as Narges Rezaeimomenabad, a 40-year-old grandmother and mother of three who moved here from Iran 10 years ago and married an Afghan man.

On Monday morning, she loaded a pistol in a bathroom at the police compound, hid it in her long scarf and shot an American police trainer, apparently becoming the first Afghan woman to carry out such an attack.

Narges also tried to shoot police officials after killing the American. Luckily for them, her pistol jammed. Her husband is also under investigation.

Her son Sayed, 16, and daughter Fatima, 13, described how they tried to call their parents 100 times after news broke of the shooting, then waited in vain for them to come home.

They recalled Narges's severe mood swings, and how at times she beat them and even pulled out a knife. But the children said she was consistent in bemoaning poverty.

"She was usually complaining about poverty. She was complaining to my father about our conditions. She was saying that my father was poor," Sayid said in an interview in their damp, cold two-room cement house.

On the floor beside him were his mother's prescriptions and a thick plastic bag filled with pills she tried to swallow to end the misery about a month ago. On another occasion, she cut her wrist with a razor, Sayed said.

"My father was usually calm and sometimes would say that she was guilty too because it wasn't a forced marriage. They fell in love and got married."

There was no sign in their neighborhood of the billions of dollars of Western aid that have poured into Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, or of government investment.

RAW SEWAGE, STAGNANT WATER, DIRT ROADS

The lane outside their home stank of raw sewage.

Dirty, stagnant water filled holes in dirt roads nearby, where children in tattered clothes played and butchers stood by cow's hooves in shops choked by dust.

Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest nations, with a third of its 30 million residents living under the poverty line.

The sole distractions from the daily grind appeared to be a deck of playing cards and a compact disc with songs from Iranian pop singers, scattered on the floor of a room where Narges would lock herself in and weep, or sit in silence.

At times, Narges would try to focus on building her children's confidence, telling them to be guided by the Muslim holy book, the Koran, to tackle life's problems.

Sayed and Fatima said she never spoke badly of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan or of President Hamid Karzai's government.

Neighbor Mohammad Ismail Kohistani was dumbfounded to hear on the radio that Afghan officials were combing Narges' phone records to try to determine whether al Qaeda or the Taliban could have brainwashed her into carrying out a mission.

But he was acutely aware of her mental problems and often heard her scream at her husband, whose low-level job in the crime investigation unit of the police brought home little cash.

Kohistani, who operates a small sewing shop with battered machines, never imagined his neighbor could be accused of a high-profile attack that raised new questions about the direction of an unpopular war.

"I became very depressed and sad," said Kohistani, sitting on the floor few feet from a tiny wood-burning stove in Narges's home, alongside family photographs and a police training manual.

Fatima would often seek refuge in Kohistani's house when her mother's behavior became unbearable. "She did not hate us, but usually she was angry and would not talk to us," said Fatima, her eyes moist with tears.

Nevertheless, she missed her mother. The children were staying with a cousin.

"I ask the government to free my mother, otherwise our future will be destroyed," said Fatima.

Officials described it as another "insider shooting", in which Afghan forces turn on Westerners they are meant to be working with to stabilize the country. There have been over 52 such attacks so far this year.

The shooting at the police headquarters may have alarmed Afghanistan's Western allies. But some Afghans have grown numb to the violence.

Kohistani's 70-year-old father Omara Khan, who sports a white beard, sat twirling prayer beads beneath a photograph of Narges in a black veil beside one of her husband.

Asked what he thought of the attack, he laughed.

"This is common in Afghanistan," said Khan, who lived through decades of upheaval, including the 10-year Soviet occupation and a civil war that destroyed half of Kabul and killed some 50,000 civilians.

"People are killed every day."

(Editing by Ron Popeski)


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Syria to discuss Brahimi peace proposals with Russia

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent a senior diplomat to Moscow on Wednesday to discuss proposals to end the conflict convulsing his country made by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, Syrian and Lebanese sources said.

Brahimi, who saw Assad on Monday and is planning to hold a series of meetings with Syrian officials and dissidents in Damascus this week, is trying to broker a peaceful transfer of power, but has disclosed little about how this might be done.

More than 44,000 Syrians have been killed in a revolt against four decades of Assad family rule, a conflict that began with peaceful protests but which has descended into civil war.

Past peace efforts have floundered, with world powers divided over what has become an increasingly sectarian struggle between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and Assad's security forces, drawn primarily from his Shi'ite-rooted Alawite minority.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Makdad flew to Moscow to discuss the details of the talks with Brahimi, said a Syrian security source, who would not say if a deal was in the works.

However, a Lebanese official close to Damascus said Makdad had been sent to seek Russian advice on a possible agreement.

He said Syrian officials were upbeat after talks with Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy, who met Foreign Minister Walid Moualem on Tuesday a day after his session with Assad, but who has not outlined his ideas in public.

"There is a new mood now and something good is happening," the official said, asking not to be named. He gave no details.

Russia, which has given Assad diplomatic and military aid to help him weather the 21-month-old uprising, has said it is not protecting him, but has fiercely criticized any foreign backing for rebels and, with China, has blocked U.N. Security Council action on Syria.

"ASSAD CANNOT STAY"

A Russian Foreign Ministry source said Makdad and an aide would meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Mikhail Bogdanov, the Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, on Thursday, but did not disclose the nature of the talks.

On Saturday, Lavrov said Syria's civil war had reached a stalemate, saying international efforts to get Assad to quit would fail. Bogdanov had earlier acknowledged that Syrian rebels were gaining ground and might win.

Given the scale of the bloodshed and destruction, Assad's opponents insist the Syrian president must go.

Moaz Alkhatib, head of the internationally-recognized Syrian National Coalition opposition, has criticized any notion of a transitional government in which Assad would stay on as a figurehead president stripped of real powers.

Comments on Alkhatib's Facebook page on Monday suggested that the opposition believed this was one of Brahimi's ideas.

"The government and its president cannot stay in power, with or without their powers," Alkhatib wrote, saying his Coalition had told Brahimi it rejected any such solution.

While Brahimi was working to bridge the vast gaps between Assad and his foes, fighting raged across the country and a senior Syrian military officer defected to the rebels.

Syrian army shelling killed about 20 people, at least eight of them children, in the northern province of Raqqa, a video posted by opposition campaigners showed.

The video, published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, showed rows of blood-stained bodies laid out on blankets. The sound of crying relatives could be heard in the background.

The shelling hit the province's al-Qahtania village, but it was unclear when the attack had occurred.

STRATEGIC BASE

Rebels relaunched their assault on the Wadi Deif military base in the northwestern province of Idlib, in a battle for a major army compound and fuel storage and distribution point.

Activist Ahmed Kaddour said rebels were firing mortars and had attacked the base with a vehicle rigged with explosives.

The British-based Observatory, which uses a network of contacts in Syria to monitor the conflict, said a rebel commander was among several people killed in Wednesday's fighting, which it said was among the heaviest for months.

The military used artillery and air strikes to try to hold back rebels assaulting Wadi Deif and the town of Morek in Hama province further south. In one air raid, several rockets fell near a field hospital in the town of Saraqeb, in Idlib province, wounding several people, the Observatory said.

As violence has intensified in recent weeks, daily death tolls have climbed. The Observatory reported at least 190 had been killed across the country on Tuesday alone.

The head of Syria's military police changed sides and declared allegiance to the anti-Assad revolt.

"I am General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal, head of the military police. I have defected because of the deviation of the army from its primary duty of protecting the country and its transformation into gangs of killing and destruction," the officer said in a video published on YouTube.

A Syrian security source confirmed the defection, but said Shalal was near retirement and had only defected to "play hero".

Syrian Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar left Lebanon for Damascus after being treated in Beirut for wounds sustained in a rebel bomb attack this month.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Andrew Osborn)


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Russian parliament approves ban on American adoptions

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A bill banning Americans from adopting Russian children went to President Vladimir Putin for his signature on Wednesday after winning final approval from parliament in retaliation for a U.S. law that targets Russian human rights abusers.

Putin has strongly hinted he will sign the bill, which would also outlaw some U.S.-funded non-governmental groups and impose visa bans and asset freezes on Americans accused of violating the rights of Russians.

The Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, voted unanimously to approve the bill, which has clouded U.S.-Russia relations and outraged Russian liberals who say lawmakers are playing a political game with the lives of children.

U.S.-Russia ties are already strained over issues ranging from Syria to the Kremlin's treatment of opponents and restrictions imposed on civil society groups since Putin, in power since 2000, began a new six-year term in May.

The bill has also drawn unusual criticism from senior government officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Olga Golodets, a deputy prime minister who warned the Kremlin that it may violate an international convention on children's rights.

Lavrov said last week that the ban would be "wrong", and that Russia should stand by a long-awaited bilateral accord that improves its ability to keep tabs on children adopted by Americans, which entered into force on November 1.

But Lavrov appears to have backed down. Foreign Ministry officials said on Wednesday that the bill would not violate the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Russia would take steps to halt the bilateral agreement.

Putin has described the bill as an emotional but appropriate response to U.S. legislation he said was poisoning relations.

U.S. President Barack Obama this month signed off on the Magnitsky Act, which imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russians accused of human rights violations, including those linked to the death in custody of an anti-graft lawyer in 2009.

The ban on American adoptions takes Russia's response a step further, playing on deep sensitivity among Russians - and the government in particular - about adoptions by foreigners, which skyrocketed after the 1991 Soviet collapse.

MORAL ARGUMENTS

The bill is named after Dima Yakovlev, a Russian-born toddler who died of a heat stroke when his adoptive American father forgot him in a car. He is one of 19 Russian-born children Moscow says have died "at the hands of U.S. citizens" in a decade, in cases that have been prominently featured in Russian state media.

In a poll conducted on December 23 by the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation, 75 percent of respondents said Russia should ban or place additional restrictions on foreign adoptions.

"It is immoral to send our children abroad to any country," Valery Shtyrov, a Federation Council deputy, said in a one-sided debate peppered with hawkish rhetoric before the 143-0 vote.

Children's rights advocates say the law, due to take effect on January 1 if signed by Putin, will deprive children of a way out of Russia's overcrowded orphanage system.

"This is the most vile law passed since Putin came to power," opposition activist Boris Nemtsov said, saying he was certain the president would sign it. "Putin is taking children hostage, like a terrorist".

Police said they had arrested seven people protesting against the law on Wednesday outside the Federation Council.

Nevertheless, lawmaker Gennady Makin said the Magnitsky Act demanded a tough response.

"He who comes to Russia with a sword dies by that sword," he said.

The Russian bill would outlaw U.S.-funded "non-profit organizations that engage in political activity", which Putin accuses of trying to influence Russian politics.

Russia ejected the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funds Russian non-governmental groups, in October, and Putin has signed a law forcing many foreign-funded organizations to register as "foreign agents" - a term that evokes the Cold War.

Americans affected by the visa ban could include those involved in the prosecution of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer serving a 25-year prison term in the United States after an arrest and trial condemned as unfair by Moscow.

(Editing by Peter Graff and Andrew Osborn)


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Israel will build in Jerusalem despite criticism: Netanyahu

Written By Bersemangat on Kamis, 20 Desember 2012 | 00.42

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday his government would press ahead with expanding Jewish settlements around Jerusalem despite Western criticism of its plan to build 6,000 more homes in territory Palestinians seek for a state.

In addition to several thousand housing units approved earlier this month, Israeli media said initial approval was granted on Wednesday for construction of another 3,400 units in Jerusalem and in the West Bank.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in a 1967 war and annexed it as part of its capital in a move never recognized internationally. Palestinians want the area to be capital of a state they seek to establish in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, land also captured by Israel.

"We are going to build in Jerusalem for all its residents, this is something that has been done by all previous governments and this is something that my government will continue to do," Netanyahu said in a meeting with foreign ambassadors.

"Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years," Netanyahu said, "Imagine that you would limit construction in your own capital, it doesn't make sense."

Netanyahu launched his latest settlement expansion push after Palestinians won de facto recognition as a state in a United Nations vote last month.

Israeli analysts see the settlement drive also as an effort by Netanyahu to enhance support for his right-wing Likud party against other hawkish rivals in a January 22 parliamentary election he is expected to win.

Most world powers deem Israeli settlements illegal and say they are an obstacle to peace. The Palestinians say Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank will deny them a viable state.

The United States and Europe have strongly condemned Israel's latest building plans, and Israeli ambassadors were summoned earlier this month for a reprimand in at least half a dozen European capitals.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said this week that Washington was "deeply disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action."

Nuland said settlement expansion put the goal of achieving a two-state solution already delayed by peace talks being stalled for two years, "further at risk."

Nimr Hammad, a spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas told Palestinian radio the Palestinians may protest "to the (U.N.) Security Council and seek a resolution there" against Israel's latest settlement plans.

(Writing by Maayan Lubell; Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Ramallah; Editing by Jon Hemming)


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Egyptian Islamists plan mass protest ahead of constitution vote

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian Islamist groups are planning a mass protest in Alexandria on Friday, a move that will raise tensions a day before the final stage of a referendum on a new constitution that has split the nation.

The rally announced by the Muslim Brotherhood responds to a violent confrontation between Islamists and their liberal and secular opponents in Egypt's second city last week that ended with a Muslim preacher besieged inside his mosque for 14 hours.

The run-up to the referendum on the Islamist-backed constitution, billed as a major impetus for Egypt's democratic transition, has been marked by often violent protests in which at least eight people have died.

The first day of voting last weekend resulted in a 57 percent vote in favor of the draft basic law, according to official media. The final stage on Saturday is expected to endorse that result as it covers parts of Egypt, particularly rural areas, even more sympathetic to the Islamist cause.

Last week's clashes in Alexandria involved protesters armed with clubs, knives and swords.

"What happened last Friday reveals the ugly face of secularism," said a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group which backed President Mohamed Mursi in his presidential election victory in June.

Opponents of Mursi staged protests in Cairo on Tuesday evening but numbers were down on previous demonstrations.

Several hundred protesters outside the presidential palace chanted "Revolution, revolution, for the sake of the constitution" and called on Mursi to "Leave, leave, you coward!".

STONE-THROWING

A protester at the presidential palace, Ahmed Mahmoud, 24, said: "We are here to remind Mursi that we will not give up our revolution and won't leave until he leaves."

Shortly after midnight, a few hundred protesters who had planned to spend the night in tents set up around the palace were attacked with stones.

"Unknown people threw stones at us from behind the walls the army had built at all entrances to the palace, and some of the protesters were injured in the leg and head," protester Karim el-Shaer told Reuters.

If the constitution is passed, national elections can take place early next year, something many hope will help end the turmoil that has gripped the Arab world's most populous nation since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak almost two years ago.

But the closeness of the first day of voting and the low turnout suggest more difficulties ahead for Mursi as he seeks to rally support for difficult economic reforms needed to bring down the budget deficit, such as raising taxes and cutting fuel subsidies.

Mursi and his backers say the constitution is needed to advance Egypt's transition from decades of military-backed autocratic rule. Opponents say it is too Islamist and ignores the rights of women and of minorities, including 10 percent of Egyptians who are Christian.

Demonstrations erupted when Mursi awarded himself extra powers on November 22 and then fast-tracked the constitution through an assembly that is dominated by his Islamist allies and boycotted by many liberals.

The referendum has had to be held over two days because many of the judges needed to oversee polling staged a boycott in protest. In order to pass, the constitution must be approved by more than 50 percent of those voting.

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh and Edmund Blair; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


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Three more polio workers shot in Pakistan; eight dead in 48 hours

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Three workers in a polio eradication campaign were shot in Pakistan on Wednesday, and two of them were killed, the latest in an unprecedented string of attacks over the past three days that has partially halted the U.N.-backed campaign.

The United Nations in Pakistan has pulled all staff involved in the campaign off the streets, spokesman Michael Coleman said.

The government said immunization was continuing in some areas without U.N. support although many workers refused to go out. Women health workers held protests in the southern city of Karachi and in the capital, Islamabad.

"We go out and risk our lives to save other people's children from being permanently handicapped, for what? So that our own children become orphans?" health worker Ambreen Bibi said at the Islamabad protest.

The government was caught off guard by the violence, saying they had not expected attacks in areas far from Taliban strongholds and they would have to change tactics in the health campaign.

"We didn't expect such attacks in Karachi," said Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, minister for human rights, who oversees the polio campaign. He was referring to the southern commercial hub where there have been attacks this week.

"In far flung areas where the threats are more pronounced, we have been providing polio teams security."

Wednesday saw four separate attacks, all in the north. In the district of Charsadda, men on motorbikes shot dead a woman and her driver, police and health officials said.

Hours earlier, gunmen wounded a male health worker in the nearby provincial capital of Peshawar. He was in critical condition, said a doctor at the Lady Reading Hospital where he is being treated.

Four other women health workers were shot at but not hit in nearby Nowshera, said Jan Baz Afridi, deputy head of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation. Two women health workers were shot at in Dwasaro village in Charsadda, police said.

It was not clear who was behind the violence.

Many Islamists, including Taliban militants, have long opposed the campaign. Some say it aims to sterilize Muslims, while one militant commander said it could not continue unless attacks by U.S. drone aircraft stopped.

The Taliban have repeatedly threatened health workers involved in the campaign. Some said they received calls telling them to stop working with "infidels" just before the attacks.

But a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ihsanullah Ihsan, told Reuters his group was not involved in the violence.

"BETTER COORDINATION"

On Monday and Tuesday, six health workers were killed in attacks in the southern port city of Karachi and in Peshawar. Five were women and the youngest was 17.

Five of the shootings happened in Karachi, home to 18 million people. Health authorities there suspended the polio eradication campaign in the entire province of Sindh.

Karachi police spokesman Imran Shaukat said teams were supposed to tell police of their movements but had not done so.

"There has to be better coordination between the health department and police," he said. "We have decided that we will be more forthcoming and contact polio team heads ourselves."

Minister Khokhar said the drive would resume as soon as security was in place.

"The teams go into every little neighborhood. You can understand that enormous resources are needed if we have to protect each and every team and worker, which we will have to now," he said.

On Wednesday, police said they killed two people and arrested 15 during raids connected to the shootings.

Authorities in the northern Khyber Paktunkhwa province, the capital of which is Peshawar, said they would not accept the U.N.'s recommendation to suspend the campaign.

"If we stopped the campaign it would encourage the forces opposing the polio vaccination," said provincial official Javed Marwat.

But their insistence the campaign continue angered health workers who said their colleagues told officials in Charsadda about threats before Wednesday's shootings. The officials insisted the vaccinations take place anyway.

Khokar said Taliban hostility to the campaign increased after it emerged that the CIA had used a fake vaccination campaign to try to gather information about Osama bin Laden, before he was found and killed in a Pakistani town last year.

Pakistan had 20,000 polio cases in 1994 but vigorous vaccination efforts had brought the number down to 56 in 2012, the government said.

A global vaccination campaign has eradicated the disease from everywhere except Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Polio can paralyze or kill within hours of infection. It is transmitted person-to-person, meaning that as long as one child is infected, the disease can be passed to others.

(Additional reporting by Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Islamabad and Imtiaz Shah in Karachi; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Michael Perry and Robert Birsel)


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Venezuelan official says Chavez inauguration could be delayed

CARACAS (Reuters) - A government official in Venezuela for the first time has raised the possibility that Hugo Chavez's January 10 inauguration could be delayed as the president struggles to recover from his latest cancer surgery.

Few details have been given about the 58-year-old leader's condition after his fourth operation in 18 months. Officials say he is lucid, but that doctors treated unexpected bleeding and then a respiratory infection after last week's procedure.

Comments by Congress leader Diosdado Cabello, a close ally of the president, suggest government officials may postpone the inauguration to accommodate Chavez's recovery.

Any delay would outrage the opposition, which has insisted for months that Chavez officially hand over power while he convalesces in Cuba. The constitution says he should be sworn-in again on January 10, but there are conflicting interpretations over what would happen if he is not.

"You can't tie the will of the people to one date. If you didn't do it that day, if it isn't the tenth, doesn't the will of eight million people count?" Cabello was quoted as saying by local media on Wednesday.

Cabello spoke after a Socialist Party news conference, insisting he was offering his personal opinion and not the "official position" of his party or the national assembly.

He said the assembly could ask the Supreme Court, widely believed to be under the thumb of Chavez allies, for a ruling on any possible postponement. He said in one case a mayor was given a three-month extension to their inauguration date.

Cabello is the third most powerful figure in the government after Chavez's heir apparent, Vice President Nicolas Maduro.

One constitutional law professor said Chavez's inability to begin his third term on January 10 would not automatically trigger new elections, as has been widely reported in media.

"The issue always ends up in a debate in parliament. It's the whole assembly that will decide" through a majority vote if the president is no longer fit for office, said Jose Vicente Haro of the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas.

'RISK OF ANARCHY'

The confusion threatens to create an unruly transition to a post-Chavez government in the OPEC nation where the former soldier has vastly expanded presidential powers and built a near-cult following.

Opposition leaders decried Cabello's comments as a sign the Socialist Party could fiddle with succession rules to accommodate the president's recovery.

"They law guarantees order and peace. We must respect the constitution with no shortcuts because this could lead to anarchy, which nobody wants," said opposition legislator Hiram Gaviria. "There is no need for any interpretation by the Supreme Court."

The government said late on Tuesday that Chavez was "stable" again but needed complete rest after suffering a respiratory infection.

Chavez himself raised the possibility of his incapacitation before leaving for Cuba, naming Maduro as his preferred successor and urging Venezuelans to vote for the former bus driver if there were a new presidential election.

The consequences are huge, not just for a nation with the world's largest crude reserves, but also for an alliance of left-wing Latin American governments led by Chavez and dependent on his oil-fueled generosity to help support their economies.

One ally and fellow OPEC nation leader, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, said on Twitter late on Tuesday that Chavez was recovering satisfactorily, "and has even resumed work ... we have faith and hope that he will win this battle."

A new election would likely pit Maduro against opposition leader Henrique Capriles. In one sign of how the political forces are shaping up in Venezuela, Chavez allies won 20 out of 23 governorships in state elections on Sunday.

To follow us on Twitter: @ReutersVzla

(Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga in Caracas and Eduardo Garcia in Quito; Editing by Doina Chiacu)


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Fear slows Libyan probe into attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi

TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A Libyan reluctance to crack down on suspected Islamist groups behind the deadly attack on the U.S. Benghazi mission highlights the failure of police and courts to stamp their authority and may open the way for militants to strengthen their grip.

The September 11 assault, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, was the most high profile attack in post-war Libya and yet no significant arrests have been made and witnesses say they have yet to be questioned.

In a scathing assessment released on Tuesday, an official U.S. inquiry determined that security at the mission in eastern Libya was inadequate to deal with the attack and that there was little evidence militia guards alerted Americans to the assault or swiftly summoned reinforcements once it was under way.

The five-member inquiry board found that Libyan guards were "poorly skilled", that U.S. intelligence provided no "specific tactical warning" of the attack, and that there was "little understanding of militias in Benghazi and the threat they posed to U.S. interests" in the eastern Libyan city.

In a country where armed militias wield the real power on the ground, some say it is too difficult for the weak state armed forces to move against these groups and there is no real desire to dig too deep for fear of setting off reprisals.

Seeking justice remains a tough task in the oil-producing North African state, where authorities - overwhelmed without an effective army or police force at their disposal - have little power to protect citizens or confront criminal suspects.

"They are afraid and they don't have the power to face these people, who could just get stronger and stronger," an official from Libya's former interim leadership said.

"Security is the priority, and what is holding everything back. It just hasn't been faced properly."

A year after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, the legacy of four decades of one-man rule - when many formal institutions of statehood withered - and of the popular uprising that killed him, is an anarchic swarm of militias that provide both what passes for official security and poses the main threat to it.

ATTACK ON SEPT. 11 ANNIVERSARY

U.S. and Libyan officials have pledged to hunt down the gunmen who attacked the U.S. diplomatic mission and a CIA annex in Benghazi in the night of the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington by al Qaeda.

The incident has raised questions about the adequacy of security at U.S. embassies around the globe and where to draw the line between protecting American diplomats in dangerous places and giving them enough freedom to do their jobs.

U.S. intelligence officials say militants with ties to al Qaeda affiliates were likely involved in the Benghazi attack and witnesses say members of the Islamist Ansar al-Shariah group were at the scene.

The group, which has denied involvement, was swept out of its Benghazi bases shortly after the attack by a mob of pro-government demonstrators angry at the might of militia groups.

Days after the attacks, Libyan officials said eight people had been detained and around 50 were "wanted for investigation". The eight turned out to be only looters, some officials said.

"The state of the investigation ... reflects the problem of the paralysis of investigative capacity of Libyan security forces," Claudia Gazzini of the International Crisis Group said.

"This is generally linked to the lack of security and also to threats directly made against prosecutors and judges."

"A JOKE"

Libya has insisted it will lead the investigation but one U.S. official in Washington familiar with the inquiry described it as "a joke": "(There is) no real progress that we can see."

Another offered a more tempered view. "It has been inherently challenging considering the nature of the crime and the region of the world."

FBI agents went to Benghazi in October to analyze the crime scene but have since remained in Tripoli because of security concerns. In an effort to generate leads, the FBI has put out a poster asking for information.

So far, a Tunisian is under investigation in Tunisia, having been deported from Turkey, and Egyptian authorities are holding one man whose group is suspected of links to the attack.

In Libya, some witnesses say they have yet to be questioned.

A Libyan militia commander, Ahmed Abu Khattala, who U.S. officials said they would want to question in connection with the attacks, said he was present during the incident but was not one of the ringleaders. A Libyan official said there was not enough evidence to arrest him.

"Until now nobody has approached me (as part of the investigation)," Abu Khattala told Reuters.

Abdelsalam al-Barghathi, a commander overseeing the security reaction on the night, also said earlier this month he had yet to be questioned. "I am surprised that no one asked me about what happened that day."

A Libyan security source initially involved in the investigation said he quickly decided to step down. "Who was going to protect me if we carried out the investigation honestly?" he said.

"Benghazi is a small place, everyone knows everyone and those people with the kind of weapons used during the attack are well-known in the community. The probe was going to lead to them but we were not given guarantees of protection."

The chain of command of the investigation was passed from one senior judicial official to another in Benghazi before Libya's prosecutor general in Tripoli transferred the case to the capital. "It is a serious investigation," an official from his office said.

A security committee in the national assembly is playing a supervisory role. "It is a very important issue. We hope it will be resolved as soon as possible," said panel member Mohammed Bitro. "Libya has changed; to discover the truth you need time."

NO ONE IMMUNE

Benghazi, Libya's second biggest city, was where the anti-Gaddafi uprising broke out but it is now a hot spot for violence, riven with armed factions. Last month, Benghazi's police chief was shot dead, the latest in a series of killings.

In a rare example of security forces flexing their muscles, police said two arrests were made over recent assassinations of security officials. But ensuing attacks on police stations underline the scale of the challenge facing them.

"Some in the West believe the authorities are negligent in carrying out the investigation. They aren't. They just do not have the strength and the experience to solve such a dilemma," Younis Najim, a Benghazi civil society activist, said.

"The suspects are free and known but each have their own security brigade for protection. The police are not strong enough to declare war on them, but the people are on the police's side."

With Libyan courts still shaky and thousands of people still in detention from last year's war, rights groups have identified armed militias as one of the biggest challenges to stability.

The Tripoli government has taken a twin-track approach, saying it would shut down rogue groups but licensing many of the most powerful armed brigades on which it relies to help enforce law and order. But this step appears to have done little to enhance security or central state authority.

"The groups have territories, independent sources of income, they have political bases, and they have military capabilities," said Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting. "The central government has been compelled to accommodate them in some instances and to ignore them or avoid them in others."

(Additional reporting by Ali Shuaib in Tripoli; Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria in Washington; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


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British police seek evidence of conspiracy in "plebs" row

LONDON (Reuters) - British police investigating claims an officer fabricated evidence that led to a minister resigning said on Wednesday they were looking for any signs of a conspiracy in an affair that could damage the force's reputation.

The officer posed as a member of the public and falsely claimed to have witnessed a row between cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell and police outside Prime Minister David Cameron's Downing Street office, according to a Channel 4 News report.

Mitchell quit as the "Chief Whip" in charge of maintaining discipline in Cameron's parliamentary Conservative party in October following weeks of negative headlines in which he failed to shake off the accusation that he called the officers "plebs".

The class-ridden insult was highly damaging for Mitchell and the Conservatives because it played into opposition claims that the government is elitist and out of touch with ordinary Britons squeezed at a time of economic austerity.

Reports of the confrontation came just days after two unarmed female police officers were shot dead in northern England, fuelling the indignation of police representatives already angry over government reductions in force budgets.

The Police Federation, which represents ordinary officers, relentlessly exploited the "plebs" row in its campaign against the cutbacks and changes in working conditions, but has denied conspiring to unseat the minister.

Mitchell, who admitted and apologized for swearing at the officers after they refused to let him ride his bicycle through the main Downing Street gates, maintains he never uttered the pejorative word which he said was used to destroy his career.

On Wednesday, Mitchell's political fortunes were reviving with colleagues calling for his return to government as doubt was cast over the police account of the incident.

Mitchell was warmly welcomed by other lawmakers as they gathered in parliament for Cameron's weekly question and answer session.

"A police officer posing as a member of the public and sending an email potentially to blacken the name of a cabinet minister is a very serious issue and does need to be seriously investigated," Cameron told the chamber's packed benches.

Channel 4 News said the officer had not been present at the incident, despite sending an email to a Conservative lawmaker claiming to have been a witness to the row.

The officer had also not disclosed in the email he was a policeman and had posed as a concerned member of the public, the program added.

PUBLIC TRUST

The TV report, broadcast on Tuesday, also questioned the veracity of a leaked police log of the confrontation which, like the email, said other bystanders had been present outside the gates and had been "shocked" by Mitchell's language.

Previously unseen CCTV footage of the incident aired by the program showed the street was almost empty of bystanders.

London's police force said the allegation that an officer fabricated evidence was extremely serious and went "to the very heart of the public's trust in the police service".

At the weekend it arrested a police officer on suspicion of misconduct and said it was investigating his claim to have witnessed the Downing Street incident.

It said he was a member of its Diplomatic Protection Group but was not on duty at the time.

The investigation, conducted by 30 officers, would "establish if there is any evidence of a conspiracy between this officer and any other person," the force said.

"This is a large scale and complex investigation that has grown to incorporate numerous lines of inquiry. The investigation will not be short."

(Editing by Jon Hemming)


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Catalan separatists push referendum, Madrid will try to block

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - The leaders of Catalonia's two biggest political forces signed a pact on Wednesday to overcome their enormous divide on economic and social issues and defy Madrid by holding a referendum on secession from Spain in 2014.

Growing Catalan separatism is a political headache for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who is struggling to keep Spain's finances on track and dodge an international bailout. Vice President Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said on Wednesday the government would try to block the referendum in the courts.

It is still unclear how and when the vote can be legally organized but the deal will have more direct consequences for Spain's push to control regional finances as the two parties have agreed not to implement more spending cuts.

The agreement between the center-right Convergence and Union alliance, or CiU, and the radical Republican Left, or ERC, falls short of a governing coalition but the ERC will support CiU's budget and the two will push together for the referendum.

"We will face a lot of adversaries, powerful ones, without scruples," CiU leader Artur Mas said at the signing. But he said that acting together the CiU and ERC had enough power in the local parliament to push ahead with the vote.

A deep recession and unemployment have stoked separatism in Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain that generates one-fifth of the country's economy and has its own language and distinct culture.

Mas, who has implemented unpopular spending cuts, held early elections November 25 to test support for his new drive for independence for Catalonia. Many Catalans believe that their region will be better off economically if it leaves Spain, saying that too many of their taxes go to help out poorer regions.

In the election Mas's CiU alliance ended up with 50 seats in the local legislature, losing 12 seats, while the traditional separatist party ERC gained 11 seats and has 21.

Together they have an absolute majority in the 135-seat Catalan parliament.

However, it will be an uneasy alliance. The ERC has opposed CiU's policy of deficit cutting, which has hit social services, schools and hospitals in the last two years.

To win over the ERC, CiU has shown willingness to place levies that will hit the wealthiest Catalans and impose a tax on bank deposits. The ERC has signaled it is willing to make concessions in order to get to the referendum.

Analysts said shared passion for the referendum could make the unlikely alliance hold for two years.

"I'm not naive enough to say it will be easy, but I believe the pact will last through the referendum," said Salvador Cardus, professor of sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

"There is a strong personal commitment between the two leaders for Catalans to express their opinion about their political future."

Constitutional scholars said that there will be many legal twists and turns over the next two years, but that Catalonia will probably be able to hold some form of public consultation, though it may end up being a non-binding or symbolic vote.

Unlike the self-determination effort in Scotland, which has received the go-ahead from the conservative government of British Prime Minister David Cameron, Catalonia will probably have to test various alternatives, said Ferran Requejo, political science professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Mas's government will likely pass a Referendum Law in the Catalan legislature, Requejo said, which is likely to be struck down by the Constitutional Court.

"Eventually this will probably be played out in an international legal context, beginning with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," he said, referring to the United Nations agreement in force since 1976 that allows for self-determination. "Spain signed that pact."

(Editing by Fiona Ortiz and Julien Toyer)


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U.N. seeks $1.5 billion to aid suffering Syrians

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $1.5 billion to provide life-saving aid to millions of Syrians suffering in a "dramatically deteriorating" humanitarian situation.

The twin appeals, for $519.6 million to help four million people within Syria and $1 billion to meet the needs of up to 1 million Syrian refugees in five countries until July 2013, comprise the "largest short-term humanitarian appeal ever", the world body said.

"The violence in Syria is raging across the country and there are nearly no more safe areas where people can flee and find safety," Radhouane Nouicer, U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told a news briefing in Geneva.

Noting Syria's capital Damascus was the scene of "daily shelling and bombing", he added: "It is a realistic appeal that takes into consideration what we commit ourselves to achieve, it is not a comprehensive response plan, it is limited to what we can do in such a difficult operating environment."

Inside Syria, U.N. agencies aim to help 4 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, including an estimated 2 million displaced from their homes by fighting between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels trying to topple him.

The plan provides for food, shelter and bedding, water and sanitation, emergency medical services, clothes, kitchen sets and baby supplies for beleaguered civilians in all 14 provinces.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) is reaching 1.5 million Syrians inside the country with food rations each month, but said it faces increasing constraints, including mounting insecurity and fuel shortages.

"Food processing, milling, bakeries rely on fuel electricity to produce a bread product. And of course we are dealing with a largely urbanized population here, so naturally any interruption of that infrastructure is going to be cause for concern," said David Kaatrud, WFP director of emergencies.

"GRIM SITUATION"

More than 525,000 Syrian refugees have already been registered abroad and the latest estimate is that up to 1 million refugees in five countries, including Egypt for the first time, will need help in the first half of 2013, the U.N. refugee agency said.

There are already more than 10,400 Syrian refugees registered in Egypt, but the government estimates that there are tens of thousands who have not sought assistance yet, it said.

"The grim situation inside Syria has a direct impact on refugee outflows to the neighboring countries," Panos Moumtzis, UNHCR regional refugee coordinator, told the briefing.

"I just came from the borders where I was shocked again one more time to hear the horrific stories that refugees tell us about their experiences, fleeing violence, fleeing insecurity. We're talking about women and children, entire villages that are uprooted and flee to safety to the neighboring countries."

More than half of the Syrians affected by the 20-month conflict, both inside the country and in surrounding countries, are children under the age of 18, according to UNICEF.

"This represents children whose future is in jeopardy, children who are missing out of school, newborns who are threatened because they don't receive the life-saving vaccines and children who are severely affected because of the violence and trauma they are exposed to," said Maria Calivis, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

She added: "One of things children that ask for most, whether in camps or in displaced facilities within Syria, is schooling. This has been repeated to us over and over again. What children miss most is opportunity to continue their schooling no matter what their age is."

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Jon Hemming)


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Ban on Americans adopting Russians advances in Moscow

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A bill to ban Americans from adopting Russian children won preliminary parliamentary approval on Wednesday in a retaliatory gesture for a U.S. law punishing alleged Russian human rights violators.

Despite criticism of the measure by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, pro-Kremlin lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, and another that would bar Russian non-profit groups which receive funds from the United States.

Only 15 of 450 deputies in the lower house, the State Duma, opposed the proposals. The bill, expected to pass its final reading on Friday, still needs President Vladimir Putin's signature to become law.

The proposals were added to a bill which would bar entry to Americans who violate the rights of Russians abroad and freeze their assets, mirroring the so-called U.S. Magnitsky Act.

The tit-for-tat feud began when the U.S. Congress approved the trade bill that orders the United States to deny visas to Russian human rights violators. It was drawn up because of concern over the death in a Russian prison of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. It

Putin backed the original Duma bill but had signaled he wants to limit the spat with U.S. President Barack Obama's administration. The Kremlin says Obama will visit Russia early next year.

KREMLIN WORRIES ABOUT IMPACT

The Kremlin, worried about long-term damage to relations with Washington, distanced itself from the adoption measure on Wednesday, raising doubts about whether Putin will sign off on it.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the lawmakers' initiative as "tough and emotional" and the Kremlin's position as more "restrained".

Nationalist politicians have long viewed foreign adoptions of Russian children as an embarrassment that implies Russia cannot care for its own, but critics of the bill say children should not fall victim to political maneuvering.

Police said they detained 30 protesters for holding an unauthorized demonstration outside the Duma.

Some two dozen protesters stood in the freezing cold heckling deputies as they entered the building. One activist held up before-and-after pictures of a Russian child looking bruised, then happy with his new American parents.

"It deprives children of the possibility to grow up in families of loving parents," protester Natalya Tsymbalova said shortly before she was detained.

"To deprive children of this possibility is mean."

FOREIGN ADOPTIONS

Russia is the third most popular country for U.S. foreign adoptions after China and Ethiopia, according to the U.S. State Department. Last year, 962 orphans were adopted by Americans.

It is a statistic bemoaned by Russian politicians. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Russians should not be adopted abroad - although he did not say whether he supported the bill.

"Foreign adoptions is a sign of ... our indifference," Medvedev said in televised comments on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Lavrov said a complete ban on U.S. adoptions would be wrong and Education Minister Dmitry Livanov criticized the idea on his Twitter micro blog.

Any ban on U.S. adoptions would go back on new rules agreed in July.

NGOS FIGHT FOR LIFE

The Duma also passed a bill that bans foreign-sponsored political non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from working in Russia without registering as foreign agents and to ban people with double citizenships from leading those organizations.

NGOs, however, fight to continue their work in Russia.

"They may take away our registration, seize our office - don't know to whose advantage. But we can continue the work as an unregistered organization," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), was quoted as saying by Interfax.

(Additional reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya and Maria Tsvetkova, Whiting by Alissa de Carbonnel and Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; Editing by Michael Roddy)


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Bosnian Serb wartime intelligence chief gets life jail term

Written By Bersemangat on Kamis, 13 Desember 2012 | 00.42

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal sentenced Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir to life in prison on Wednesday for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.

U.N. judges said Tolimir, 64, a former intelligence chief and close aide to Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, planned and oversaw the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in days after the town of Srebenica was overrun.

The massacre was part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by nationalist Serbs determined to carve out a Serb state in Bosnia by removing all of the multi-ethnic province's Muslims and Croats. The 1992-95 war killed 100,000 people.

"The crimes were massive in scale, severe in intensity and devastating in effect," presiding judge Christoph Flugge said when reading the verdict at the Hague-based tribunal.

He said Tolimir had been close to Mladic and was referred by witnesses as his "right-hand man and eyes and ears."

A panel of judges found Tolimr responsible for, among other things, the killing of up to 1,500 Srebrenica Muslim men and boys in a warehouse in the village of Kravica, near Srebrenica. Bosnian Serbs with machineguns and rifle-propelled grenades fired on men in the warehouse, who could not escape.

"The harm inflicted upon these men rises to the level of serious bodily and mental harm and constitute acts of genocide," Flugge said.

Together with the top military command, including Mladic himself, Tolimir was a member of a joint criminal enterprise to remove Muslims from eastern Bosnia, a panel of judges said.

He was found guilty of genocide, conspiring to commit genocide, violations of the laws and customs of wars and crimes against humanity including murder, persecution and extermination of non-Muslims.

"This is (something) that can appease my soul after everything I survived in July 1995," said Sabaheta Fejzic, who lost her husband and son in the Srebrenica bloodletting.

"If there was a death penalty, Tolimir would deserve it. But since it does not exist, then he should rot in jail for the rest of his life," Fejzic said after she heard the verdict on television.

Tolimir was arrested in June 2007 on the border between Serbia and Bosnia's Serb Republic and is thought by security experts to have helped Mladic evade arrest until then.

Mladic, 70, was eventually captured in Serbia last year after 16 years on the run and is now standing trial in The Hague for the Srebrenica massacre and other alleged war crimes.

(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac, additional reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


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"Friends of Syria" group recognizes opposition coalition

MARRAKECH, Morocco (Reuters) - Western and Arab nations sympathetic to Syria's uprising against President Bashar al-Assad gave full political recognition on Wednesday to the opposition, reflecting a hardening consensus that the 20-month-old uprising might be nearing a tipping point.

Meeting in the Moroccan city of Marrakech as rebels battled Assad's troops on the outskirts of his Damascus power base, the "Friends of Syria" group called on Assad to step aside and warned him against using chemical weapons.

At the same meeting, the leader of Syria's opposition coalition called on the Alawite minority to launch a campaign of civil disobedience against Assad, an Alawite who faces a mainly Sunni Muslim uprising against his rule.

Hours earlier, President Barack Obama announced that Washington would now recognize the newly formed coalition of opposition groups as Syria's legitimate representative, joining France, Britain, Turkey and Gulf states.

"Participants acknowledge the National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and the umbrella organization under which the Syrian opposition are gathering," said a draft declaration of the Marrakech meeting obtained by Reuters.

The gathering brings together many Western and Arab nations opposed to Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for 42 years. But it excludes Russia, China and Iran, which have backed Assad or blocked efforts to tighten international pressure on him.

"Bashar al-Assad has lost legitimacy and should stand aside to allow a sustainable political transition," said the text.

Referring to Western intelligence reports suggesting Assad might use chemical and biological weapons, it said "any use of chemical weapons in Syria would be abhorrent and that this would draw a serious response from the international community".

Participants announced the creation of a relief fund "to support the Syrian people", calling on states and organizations to make contributions to the fund.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, attending the talks, said: " ... in the United Kingdom we do not rule out any option to save lives. The Assad regime should not doubt our resolve, or miscalculate how we would react to any use of chemical or biological weapons against the Syrian people."

The draft text called on the U.N. Security Council, which has been paralyzed by the major powers' disagreements over Syria, to come up with "a meaningful and robust response" to the crisis and urged countries that support Assad to "reconsider their positions".

NO PLEDGE OF ARMS

Although the text made no explicit commitment to arm the rebels, a diplomat following the talks said participants agreed on "the legitimate need of the Syrian people to defend itself against the violent and brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad".

Another diplomat said Western powers did not rule out supplying arms to rebel units in the future, but would want assurances about where the weapons would flow - pointing to several atrocities committed by rebel fighters and the presence of radical Islamists in their ranks.

"No option is ruled out. But there are big issues about the legality of intervening in a civil war. Any support to any group depends on the command control and the discipline on the ground," a Western diplomat at the Marrakech meeting said.

France said at the talks it was not ready to supply arms.

"For now we have decided not to move on this," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters in Morocco. "We shall see in the coming months."

Western officials are due to meet commanders of a newly formed rebel military command in Turkey next week.

Syria's state news agency SANA said Obama's recognition of the political opposition, which coincided with Washington's designation of the radical Islamist Jabhat al-Nusra group, part of the rebel force against Assad, as a terrorist organization "proves American hypocrisy".

Fighting is moving closer to Assad's residence in the centre of Damascus, and early on Wednesday government forces fired artillery and rockets at southwestern suburbs of the capital adjacent to the Mezzeh military airport, activists said.

SANA said on Wednesday that "terrorists" detonated two bombs in the Damascus district of Jaramana, killing one person and wounded five, and another two bombs behind the Justice Ministry in Damascus, wounding one person.

In central Syria an attack on a village killed or injured as many as 200 members of Assad's Alawite minority sect, activists said, but it was unclear who was behind the assault.

The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels have scored a string of victories against Assad's forces, many of them from his Alawite religious minority. There is little evidence that the government is regaining control, residents say.

"We send a direct message to the Alawite brethren. The Syria revolution is extending its hand to you, so extend your hand back and start civil disobedience against the regime because it repressed you like it repressed us," said opposition leader Mouaz Alkhatib.

Alkhatib, elected last month as leader of the National Coalition for Opposition Forces and the Syrian Revolution, urged Assad's allies Iran and Hezbollah to withdraw their support.

The Syrian army is using warplanes and heavy artillery to try to halt further advances by rebels, many of them die-hard Islamists. Opposition leaders say they need heavy weapons to sustain the momentum and change the military equation in a conflict that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.

The fighting has driven hundreds of thousands of Syrians into neighboring countries, and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said more than half a million were either registered or awaiting registration in the region.

The rebels now hold a near continuous arc of territory from the east to the southwest of the capital. With conditions deteriorating, Damascus residents now face power cuts and food shortages as they prepare for winter.

Assad's political and armed opponents, dogged by splits and rivalries throughout their battle to end his rule, have established a more unified political opposition and military command, hoping to win international support.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are already arming and financing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and other militant groups, while Iran is bankrolling Assad.

Brotherhood deputy leader Farouq Tayfour, speaking in Marrakech, said recent military gains by the rebels meant that Assad's end was rapidly approaching.

"What is happening on the battlefield is very significant," he told Reuters. "The decline of the regime has started."

"The rebels are now much closer to the palace. Bashar is under siege. His end will be like Gaddafi's end. Didn't Bashar say, 'I was born in Syria and will die in Syria'? This is what Gaddafi said as well, and that's it."

Opposition coalition member Abdelbasset Sida said diplomatic recognition in Marrakech would not be enough. "We need military support. A transitional phase has started, and we need the means to defend the liberated parts of Syria from regime strikes."

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans and Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Will Waterman and Janet McBride)


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North Korea launches rocket , raising nuclear arms stakes

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea successfully launched a rocket on Wednesday, boosting the credentials of its new leader and stepping up the threat the isolated and impoverished state poses to opponents.

The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbit, has been labeled by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting targets as far away as the continental United States.

"The satellite has entered the planned orbit," a North Korean television news reader clad in traditional Korean garb announced, after which the station played patriotic songs with the lyrics "Chosun (Korea) does what it says".

The rocket was launched just before 10 a.m. (0100 GMT), according to defense officials in South Korea and Japan, and was more successful than a rocket launched in April that flew for less than two minutes.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said that it "deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit", the first time an independent body has verified North Korean claims.

North Korea followed what it said was a similar successful launch in 2009 with a nuclear test that prompted the U.N. Security Council to stiffen sanctions that it originally imposed in 2006 after the North's first nuclear test.

North Korea is banned from developing nuclear and missile-related technology under U.N. resolutions, although Kim Jong-un, the youthful head of state who took power a year ago, is believed to have continued the state's "military first" programs put in place by his late father, Kim Jong-Il.

North Korea hailed the launch as celebrating the prowess of all three members of the Kim family to rule since it was founded in 1948.

"At a time when great yearnings and reverence for Kim Jong-il pervade the whole country, its scientists and technicians brilliantly carried out his behests to launch a scientific and technological satellite in 2012, the year marking the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung," its KCNA news agency said. Kim Il Sung, the current leader's grandfather, was North Korea's first leader.

The United States condemned the launch as "provocative" and a breach of U.N. rules, while Japan's U.N. envoy called for a Security Council meeting. However, diplomats say further tough sanctions are unlikely from the Security Council as China, the North's only major ally, will oppose them.

"The international community must work in a concerted fashion to send North Korea a clear message that its violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions have consequences," the White House said in a statement.

U.S. intelligence has linked North Korea with missile shipments to Iran. Newspapers in Japan and South Korea have reported that Iranian observers were in the North for the launch, something Iran has denied.

Japan's likely next prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who is leading in opinion polls ahead of an election on Sunday and who is known as a hawk on North Korea, called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution "strongly criticizing" Pyongyang.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman reiterated that the rocket was a "peaceful project".

"The attempt to see our satellite launch as a long-range missile launch for military purposes comes from hostile perception that tries to designate us a cause for security tension," KCNA cited the spokesman as saying.

"STUMBLING BLOCK"

China had expressed "deep concern" prior to the launch which was announced a day after a top politburo member, representing new Chinese leader Xi Jinping, met Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang.

On Wednesday, its tone was measured, regretting the launch but calling for restraint on any counter-measures, in line with a policy of effectively vetoing tougher sanctions.

"China believes the Security Council's response should be cautious and moderate, protect the overall peaceful and stable situation on the Korean peninsula, and avoid an escalation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told journalists.

Bruce Klingner, a Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation, said: "China has been the stumbling block to firmer U.N. action and we'll have to see if the new leadership is any different than its predecessors."

A senior adviser to South Korea's president said last week it was unlikely there would be action from the United Nations and Seoul would expect its allies to tighten sanctions unilaterally.

Kim Jong-un, believed to be 29 years old, took power when his father died on December 17 last year and experts believe the launch was intended to commemorate the first anniversary of his death. The April launch was timed for the centennial of the birth of Kim Il Sung.

Wednesday's success puts the North ahead of the South which has not managed to get a rocket off the ground.

"This is a considerable boost in establishing the rule of Kim Jong-un," said Cho Min, an expert at the Korea Institute of National Unification.

There have been few indications the secretive and impoverished state, where the United Nations estimates a third of people are malnourished, has made any advances in opening up economically over the past year.

North Korea remains reliant on minerals exports to China and remittances from tens of thousands of its workers overseas.

Many of its 22 million people need handouts from defectors, who have escaped to South Korea, for basic medicines.

Given the puny size of its economy - per capita income is less than $2,000 a year - one of the few ways the North can attract world attention is by emphasizing its military threat.

It wants the United States to resume aid and to recognize it diplomatically, although the April launch scuppered a planned food deal.

The North is believed to be some years away from developing a functioning nuclear warhead although it may have enough plutonium for about half a dozen nuclear bombs, according to nuclear experts.

It has also been enriching uranium, which would give it a second path to nuclear weapons as it sits on big natural uranium reserves.

"A successful launch puts North Korea closer to the capability to deploy a weaponized missile," said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

"But this would still require fitting a weapon to the missile and ensuring a reasonable degree of accuracy. The North Koreans probably do not yet have a nuclear weapon small enough for a missile to carry."

The North says its work is part of a civil nuclear program although it has also boasted of it being a "nuclear weapons power".

(Additional reporting by Jumin Park and Yoo Choonsik in SEOUL; David Alexander, Matt Spetalnick and Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON; Linda Sieg in TOKYO, Sui-Lee Wee and Michael Martina in BEIJING,; Rosmarie Francisco in MANILA; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Robert Birsel)


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