Pakistan warns against U.S. attack on militants

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. military action against insurgents inPakistan would be unacceptable and the country's army would be capable of responding, intelligence chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha told a meeting of political leaders in Islamabad, according to media reports.

Express News TV cited Pasha as saying an "American attack on Pakistan in the name of (fighting) extremism is not acceptable."

However, several television news reports said Pasha had also told an all-party meeting to discuss the crisis in ties between Washington and Islamabad that Pakistan would not allow the situation to get to a "point of no return."

Pakistan has long faced U.S. demands to attack militants on its side of the border with Afghanistan.

But the pressure has escalated since the top U.S. military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, accused Pakistan last week of supporting an attack by the militant Haqqani network on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

Support is growing in the U.S. Congress for expanding American military action in Pakistan beyond drone strikes against militants, said Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican voice on foreign policy and military affairs.

Islamabad is reluctant to go after the Haqqanis -- even though the United States provides billions of dollars in aid -- saying its troops are stretched fighting Taliban insurgents.

Pakistan says it has sacrificed more lives than any of the countries that joined the "war on terror" after the September 11 attacks by Islamist militants on the United States in 2001.

Pakistan's military faced withering public criticism after a surprise U.S. raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a garrison town not far from Islamabad in May.

A similar U.S. operation against militants in North Waziristan on the Afghan border, where American officials say the Haqqanis are based, would be another humiliation for the powerful army.

Graham said in an interview with Reuters that U.S. lawmakers might support military options beyond drone strikes that have been going on for years inside Pakistani territory.

Those options may include using U.S. bomber planes within Pakistan, said, adding that he did not advocate sending U.S. ground troops into the country.

"I would say when it comes to defending American troops, you don't want to limit yourself," Graham said. "This is not a boots-on-the-ground engagement -- I'm not talking about that, but we have a lot of assets beyond drones."

Graham said U.S. lawmakers would think about stepping up the military pressure. "If people believe it's gotten to the point that is the only way really to protect our interests, I think there would be a lot of support," he said.

REVIEWING AID

Pakistan was designated a major non-Nato ally by the United States for its support of coalition military operations in Afghanistan after 9/11.

But their relationship has been dogged by mistrust. Although

regarded as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, Pakistan is often seen from Washington as an unreliable partner.

Following U.S. accusations that some in the Pakistani government have aided anti-U.S. militants, Congress is re-evaluating its 2009 promise to triple non-military aid to Pakistan to a total of $7.5 billion over five years.

That aid came on top of billions in security assistance provided since 2001, which Washington is also rethinking.

Any unilateral U.S. military action to go after the Haqqanis would deepen anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, which is already running high over U.S. drone strikes and other issues, reducing the space for the government and army to collaborate with Washington.

The Haqqani network is allied with Afghanistan's Taliban and is believed to have close links to al Qaeda. It fights U.S. and NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan. The group's leader says it is no longer based in North Waziristan and feels secure operating in Afghanistan after making battlefield gains.

(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Augustine Anthony in Islamabad, Mirwais Harooni in Kabul and Missy Ryan and Susan Cornwall in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by John Chalmers)

Analysis: Pakistan's double-game: treachery or strategy?

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Washington has just about had it with Pakistan.

"Turns out they are disloyal, deceptive and a danger to the United States," fumed Republican Representative Ted Poe last week. "We pay them to hate us. Now we pay them to bomb us. Let's not pay them at all."

For many in America, Islamabad has been nothing short of perfidious since joining a strategic alliance with Washington 10 years ago: selectively cooperating in the war on extremist violence and taking billions of dollars in aid to do the job, while all the time sheltering and supporting Islamist militant groups that fight NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has angrily denied the charges, but if its critics are right, what could the explanation be for such duplicity? What strategic agendas might be hidden behind this puzzling statecraft?

The answer is that Pakistan wants to guarantee for itself a stake in Afghanistan's political future.

It knows that, as U.S. forces gradually withdraw from Afghanistan, ethnic groups will be competing for ascendancy there and other regional powers - from India to China and Iran - will be jostling for a foot in the door.

Islamabad's support for the Taliban movement in the 1990s gives it an outsized influence among Afghanistan's Pashtuns, who make up about 42 percent of the total population and who maintain close ties with their Pakistani fellow tribesmen.

In particular, Pakistan's powerful military is determined there should be no vacuum in Afghanistan that could be filled by its arch-foe, India.

INDIA FOCUS

Pakistan has fought three wars with its neighbor since the bloody partition of the subcontinent that led to the creation of the country in 1947, and mutual suspicion still hobbles relations between the two nuclear-armed powers today.

"They still think India is their primary policy," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and prominent political analyst. "India is always in the back of their minds."

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani - unprompted - complained that Washington's failure to deal even-handedly with New Delhi and Islamabad was a source of regional instability.

Aqil Shah, a South Asia security expert at the Harvard Society of Fellows, said Islamabad's worst-case scenario would be an Afghanistan controlled or dominated by groups with ties to India, such as the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, which it fears would pursue activities hostile to Pakistan.

"Ideally, the military would like Afghanistan to become a relatively stable satellite dominated by Islamist Pashtuns," Shah wrote in a Foreign Affairs article this week.

Although Pakistan, an Islamic state, officially abandoned support for the predominantly Pashtun Taliban after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, elements of the military never made the doctrinal shift.

Few doubt that the shadowy intelligence directorate, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has maintained links to the Taliban that emerged from its support for the Afghan mujahideen during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Until recently, there appeared to be a grudging acceptance from Washington that this was the inevitable status quo.

That was until it emerged in May that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden - who was killed in a U.S. Navy SEALs raid - had been hiding out in a Pakistani garrison town just two hours up the road from Islamabad, by some accounts for up to five years.

Relations between Pakistan and the United States have been stormy ever since, culminating in a tirade by the outgoing U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, last week.

Mullen described the Haqqani network, the most feared faction among Taliban militants in Afghanistan, as a "veritable arm" of the ISI and accused Islamabad of providing support for the group's September 13 attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

The reaction in Islamabad has been one of stunned outrage.

Washington has not gone public with evidence to back its accusation, and Pakistani officials say that contacts with the Haqqani group do not amount to actual support.

However, Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricketer-turned-populist-politician, said this week that it was too much to expect that old friends could have become enemies overnight.

He told Reuters that, instead of demanding that Pakistan attack the Haqqanis in the mountainous border region of North Waziristan, the United States should use Islamabad's leverage with the group to bring the Afghan Taliban into negotiations.

"Haqqani could be your ticket to getting them on the negotiating table, which at the moment they are refusing," Khan said. "So I think that is a much saner policy than to ask Pakistan to try to take them on."

REGIONAL GAME

The big risk for the United States in berating Islamabad is that it will exacerbate anti-American sentiment, which already runs deep in Pakistan, and perhaps embolden it further.

C. Raja Mohan, senior fellow at New Delhi's Center for Policy Research, said Pakistan was probably gambling that the United States' economic crisis and upcoming presidential elections would distract Washington.

"The real game is unfolding on the ground with the Americans. The Pakistan army is betting that the United States does not have too many choices and more broadly that the U.S. is on the decline, he said.

It is also becoming clear that as Pakistan's relations with Washington deteriorate, it can fall back into the arms of its "all-weather friend," China, the energy-hungry giant that is the biggest investor in Afghanistan's nascent resources sector.

Pakistani officials heaped praise on Beijing this week as a Chinese minister visited Islamabad. Among them was army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, arguably the country's most powerful man, who spoke of China's "unwavering support."

In addition, Pakistan has extended a cordial hand to Iran, which also shares a border with Afghanistan.

Teheran has been mostly opposed to the Taliban, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims while Iran is predominantly Shi'ite. But Iran's anti-Americanism is more deep-seated.

"My reading is the Iranians want to see the Americans go," said Raja Mohan, the Indian analyst. "They have a problem with the Taliban, but any American retreat will suit them. Iran in the short term is looking at the Americans being humiliated."

ARMY CALLS THE SHOTS

The supremacy of the military in Pakistan means that Washington has little to gain little from wagging its finger about ties with the Taliban at the civilian government, which is regularly lashed for its incompetence and corruption.

"The state has become so soft and powerless it can't make any difference," said Masood, the Pakistani retired general. "Any change will have to come from the military."

Daniel Markey, a senior fellow for South Asia at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, said the problem lies with a security establishment that continues to believe that arming and working - actively and passively - with militant groups serves its purposes.

"Until ... soul-searching takes place within the Pakistani military and the ISI, you're not likely to see an end to these U.S. demands, and a real shift in terms of the relationship," Markey said in an online discussion this week. "This is the most significant shift that has to take place."

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Pakistan pushes back against U.S., woos China

 

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan warned the United States on Tuesday to stop accusing it of playing a double game with Islamist militants and heaped praise on "all-weather friend" China.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, speaking exclusively to Reuters, said any unilateral military action by the United States to hunt down militants of the Haqqani network inside Pakistan would be a violation of his country's sovereignty.

However, he side-stepped questions on the tense relations with the United States and offered no indications of any steps Pakistan might take to soothe the fury in Washington.

The outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, last week described the Haqqani network, the most violent faction among Taliban militants in Afghanistan, as a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's ISI spy agency and accused Islamabad of providing support for the group's September 13 attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

"The negative messaging, naturally that is disturbing my people," Gilani said in the interview from his office in Islamabad. "If there is messaging that is not appropriate to our friendship, then naturally it is extremely difficult to convince my public. Therefore they should be sending positive messages."

Since Mullen's comments, Pakistan has launched a diplomatic counter-attack and attempted to drum up support from its strongest ally in the region, China.

Pakistani officials have been heaping praise on China since its public security minister arrived here on Monday for high-level talks.

"We are true friends and we count on each other," Gilani said in separate comments broadcast on television networks after talks with Meng Jianzhu on Tuesday.

The military, Pakistan's most powerful institution, also said it appreciated its giant Asian neighbor's support. Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani thanked Meng for China's "unwavering support".

China and Pakistan call each other "all-weather friends" and their close ties have been underpinned by long-standing wariness of their common neighbor, India, and a desire to hedge against U.S. influence across the region.

"They (the Pakistanis) are trying to use their diplomatic options as much as possible to defuse pressure on them. They hope China will help them in this crisis," said security analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi.

SLIM ACHIEVEMENTS

Asked why the United States had suddenly ratcheted up its criticism of Pakistan, Gilani implied that it reflected Washington's frustration with the war in Afghanistan ahead of a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country in 2014.

"Certainly they expected more results from Afghanistan, which they have not been able to achieve as yet," he said. "They have not achieved what they visualized."

Rejecting allegations that Islamabad was behind any violence across its border, he said: "It is in the interest of Pakistan to have a stable Afghanistan".

The United States has been pressing Pakistan to attack the Haqqani network, which it believes is based in North Waziristan near the Afghan border. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the group, says it is no longer based in Pakistan and feels safe operating in Afghanistan.

Analysts say Pakistan sees the Haqqanis as a counterweight to the growing influence of rival India in Afghanistan and is highly unlikely to go after the group.

The United States seems frustrated at its inability to influence Pakistani policy on militants.

In a meeting with her Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, at the United Nations on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Beijing to open a dialogue with Washington on Pakistan.

"We have stated this before, but there's clearly an urgency given recent developments and also given the close relationship that exists between Pakistan and China," a State Department official said in a briefing to reporters.

CHINA MORE POPULAR

China is vastly more popular in Pakistan than the United States, which is seen as fickle and favoring India.

Much of the Pakistani public believes that since the end of the Cold War, the United States has tilted toward India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan since the violent partition of the subcontinent in 1947.

In a demonstration of that distrust, hundreds turned out on Tuesday for anti-American rallies in Pakistani cities.

In Hyderabad, they burned pictures of U.S. President Barack Obama and Mullen, while in Karachi they protested in front of the U.S. consulate and the headquarters of the Pakistan People's Party. In Landikotal in the Khyber agency near the Afghan border, about 1,000 people turned out for a rally organized by the religious party Jamaat-e-Islami.

Also on Tuesday, a suspected U.S. drone strike on a house in Azam Warsak village in South Waziristan's tribal region on the Afghan border killed at least three alleged militants, local intelligence officials said.

Gilani pointed out that Washington did not help itself when it struck a deal on civilian nuclear cooperation with New Delhi but not Islamabad.

"There is an acute shortage of electricity in Pakistan. And there are riots. And the opposition is playing to the gallery because there is a shortage of electricity," he said.

"But they (the United States) are doing the civilian nuclear deal not with Pakistan, but with India. Now how can I convince my public that they are your (Pakistan's) friends and not the friends of India? ... the perception matters."

In a tit-for-tat deal in May, Pakistan inaugurated its second Chinese-made nuclear power reactor. China is building two more reactors at the same site, despite international misgivings about risks to nuclear safety and the integrity of non-proliferation rules.

China has also helped build the deep-sea Gwadar port on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, partly with a view to opening up an energy and trade corridor from the Gulf to western China, and has been a major supplier of military hardware to Pakistan.

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Robert Woodward)

Pakistan's main government coalition partner quits

KARACHI (Reuters) – Pakistan's Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the second largest party in the ruling coalition, will leave the governing alliance and sit in opposition at the federal level, the party said on Sunday.
The MQM said the decision was taken because of government fuel prices policy and means the U.S.-backed government of President Asif Ali Zardari may now collapse because it will lose its majority in the National Assembly.
"It has been decided. We will sit on the opposition benches in the National Assembly and the Senate," MQM spokesman Wasay Jalil said.
The MQM, which is the dominant political force in the country's financial capital Karachi, last week withdrew its two ministers from the federal cabinet because of what it said was the government's failure to improve security.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said his government would not collapse despite the MQM move, one that comes while the government tries to improve the fragile economy and contain a Taliban insurgency, problems that have kept investors away.
However, analysts said forming a new coalition would likely be a protracted, delicate process and it was more likely that early elections would be called.
An MQM statement said the decision to break with the coalition was taken because of the government's fuel price policies.
"Right at the start of the new year the government has raised the prices of petrol and kerosene oil which is unbearable for the people who are already under pressure from the already high prices," it said.
"In such a situation, the MQM considers it unfair with the people of Pakistan to sit in the government. Therefore we have decided to sit on the opposition benches in the Senate and the National Assembly.
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider in Islamabad; Editing by Michael Georgy)

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Record floods swamp Australia's northeast

GLADSTONE, Australia (Reuters) – Large parts of Australia's coastal northeast disappeared under floodwaters on Sunday in a spreading disaster that has brought some of the highest floods on record and forced thousands from their homes.
Queensland State Treasurer Andrew Fraser described the floods as a "disaster of biblical proportions" and said the ultimate cost would exceed A$1 billion (1.02 billion).
As forecasters predicted months of more rain, hundreds of residents in the town of Rockhampton, 600 km (370 miles) north of the Queensland state capital Brisbane, fled homes amid rising waters which are expected to reach over 30 feet deep in coming days.
Local Mayor Brad Carter said the town was "like an island." Across the state, the floods have affected around 200,000 people and inundated thousands of properties.
"You can look down a street for a kilometer and see nothing but water," Carter told Reuters by telephone from Rockhampton, a town of 77,000 people. "You see people in boats moving their material in and out of houses."
One person was confirmed dead in the floods on Sunday, while an intense search was under way for a second missing.
Floodwaters were receding in some areas, leaving a mammoth cleanup job, but other areas were still collecting runoff from the Christmas deluge brought by the La Nina weather pattern.
"It is the Fitzroy River flowing through down to Rockhampton that is still rising and expected to get quite near to record levels," Gordon Banks, a senior forecaster in Brisbane with Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, told Reuters.
"Those floods in the south of Queensland are hitting records. We have not seen water that high in recorded history here."
Across the state, thousands have been forced to camp out with friends or in makeshift emergency shelters over the New Year period in a disaster which has hit coal mining and agriculture particularly hard.
Mayor Carter said Rockhampton's airport was closed, road and rail links to the town were mostly cut off, water was lapping at the floorboards of some homes and police had sent reinforcements to prevent any looting.
Rockhampton sits near the mouth of the giant Fitzroy River system, one of Australia's largest, carrying the water from last week's rains down to the coast. Officials said its level had reached 8.85 meters on Sunday.
"I am at the side of the river bank at the moment. It is flowing extremely fast," council official Tony Cullen told Reuters.
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said flood waters in the town could reach nine meters (30 feet) on Monday and peak at 9.4 meters on Wednesday, a level similar to floods that hit in 1991 and 1954.
Although the rain has largely eased off, flood warnings remain current for many rivers in the state, some communities are expected to be isolated for up to two weeks and eventually further rain is expected.
Police said on Sunday 22 communities were still flooded or isolated. Where floodwaters have started to recede, there are fears of disease and accidents, in what one senior emergency official said would be "a heartbreaking return to homes."
Bureau of Meteorology hydrologist Jeff Perkins said floodwaters would also flow on down to western New South Wales. Normally the tropical wet season would only be beginning around now, meaning more headaches to come for farmers, miners and the general community.
"We have got a couple of months more and a good chance of further rainfall," Perkins told Reuters.
(Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)

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Vatican to announce new money laundering rules

ROME (Reuters) – The Vatican will announce new rules to combat financial crime Thursday as it continues to deal with a money laundering probe that has seen 23 million euros ($30.23 million) sequestered from its banking institution.
The Vatican said in a statement Wednesday that Pope Benedict would issue a so-called apostolic letter on combating financial crime, money laundering and the funding of terrorism. The Holy See would create a financial information authority.
The Vatican bank, formally known as the Institution for Religious Works (IOR), has been under investigation for suspected violations of European Union money laundering rules since September. It denies any wrongdoing.
The IOR primarily manages funds for the Vatican and institutions around the world such as charity organizations and religious orders of priests and nuns.
Finance police have frozen 23 million euros of the IOR's funds held in an account in an Italian bank in Rome after authorities deemed that two transactions were suspicious.
One was a transfer of 20 million euros to a German branch of a U.S. bank and the other was 3 million euros transferred to an Italian bank.
The Vatican said it had simply transferred its own money between its own accounts and denied any wrongdoing.
Under Bank of Italy money laundering rules, foreign banks operating in Italy, including the IOR, must provide detailed information about the origins of funds they transfer.
(Writing by James Mackenzie; editing by Ralph Boulton)

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American tourist stabbed to death in Israel

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An American tourist was stabbed to death and another woman wounded while hiking in foothills outside Jerusalem, Israeli police said on Sunday.
"We are examining whether this is a nationalistic stabbing, but other leads are being examined as well," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, using Israel's term for an attack by Palestinian militants.
Kaye Wilson, a Briton who immigrated to Israel, said she and Christine Logan, a visitor from the United States, were attacked by two Arab men while hiking on Saturday south of Jerusalem in an area near Israel's border with the occupied West Bank.
"All of a sudden two Arabs walked by and they asked me in Hebrew if I had any water. So I said, dismissively, 'see ya'. But I immediately felt that something was wrong," Wilson told Israel's Channel Two TV from her hospital bed.
"I was scared, but my friend became a bit hysterical, so I told her in English -- they spoke in Arabic -- 'be quiet, don't make any noise, it'll make them attack us,'" she said.
"Suddenly, they came, it happened so quickly. They attacked us. One of them took out a very long knife, not a bread knife, but one that was serrated," Wilson said.
"I played dead. I saw (the knife) hadn't gone into my heart. My friend was dying, I heard her making gurgling sounds."
Wilson, who was stabbed several times, managed to reach a parking area where people called the police, who mounted an overnight search for Logan. Her bound body was found early on Sunday.
Police identified Logan as an American but gave no hometown.
(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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WikiLeaks founder Assange refused bail by UK court

(Reuters) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has angered U.S. authorities by publishing secret diplomatic cables, was remanded in custody by a British court on Tuesday over allegations of sex crimes in Sweden.

Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, had earlier handed himself in to British police after Sweden had issued a European Arrest Warrant for him. Assange, who denies the allegations, will remain behind bars until a fresh hearing on December 14.

He has spent some time in Sweden and was accused this year of sexual misconduct by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers. A Swedish prosecutor wants to question him about the accusation.

WikiLeaks, which has provoked fury in Washington with its publications, vowed it would continue making public details of the 250,000 secret U.S. documents it had obtained.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates welcomed news of the arrest. "I hadn't heard that but it sounds like good news to me," Gates told reporters during a trip to Afghanistan.

At a court hearing in London, Senior District Judge Howard Riddle said: "There are substantial grounds to believe he could abscond if granted bail."

He said the allegations were serious, and that Assange had comparatively weak community ties in Britain.

His British lawyer Mark Stephens told reporters a renewed bail application would be made, and that his client was "fine."

"We are entitled to appeal to a higher court, to the High Court, and we are also entitled to go again in the magistrates court at another date," he told reporters.

He said many people believed the prosecution was politically motivated, and that he would be "released and vindicated."

But a Swedish prosecutor was cited in newspaper Aftonbladet as saying the case was not a personal matter and was not connected with his WikiLeaks work.

CELEBRITIES OFFER TO STAND SURETY

Assange, dressed in a navy suit and wearing an open-neck white shirt, initially gave his address in court as a PO Box in Australia. Pressed for a more precise address, he gave a street in Victoria, Australia.

Australian journalist John Pilger, British film director Ken Loach and Jemima Khan, former wife ofPakistani cricketer and politician Imran Khan, all offered to put up sureties to persuade the court Assange would not abscond.

Pilger, who offered 20,000 pounds ($31,600), told the court: "These charges against him in Sweden are absurd and were judged absurd by a senior Swedish prosecutor.

"It would be a travesty for Mr Assange to go within that kind of Swedish system."

Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline journalists' club in London, said Assange had worked out of the club for the past several months. Smith said he had offered him use of the club address for his bail request.

"I am suspicious of the personal charges that have been made against Mr Assange and hope that this will be properly resolved by the courts. Certainly no credible charges have been brought regarding the leaking of the information itself," Smith said in a statement.

The U.S. government and others across the world have argued the publication of cables is irresponsible and could put their national security at risk.

The WikiLeaks website was shut down after apparent political pressure on service providers, but WikiLeaks said there were now 750 global mirror sites meaning the data so far released remained publicly available. More cables would be released later on Tuesday, it said.

Lawyer Gemma Lindfield, representing the Swedish judicial authorities, said the extradition case contained allegations of four sexual assaults by Assange against two women in Stockholm in August 2010. One charge over Miss A is that Assange "sexually molested her" by ignoring her request for him to use a condom when having sex with her.

Another charge relates to "Miss W," who alleged Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was sleeping on August 7.

Swedish prosecutors opened, then dropped, then re-opened an investigation into the allegations. The crime he is suspected of is the least severe of three categories of rape, carrying a maximum of four years in jail.

Assange's Swedish lawyer has said his client would fight any extradition and believed foreign powers were influencing Sweden.

Swiss PostFinance, the banking arm of state-owned Swiss Post, has closed an account used for WikiLeaks donations and online payment service PayPal has also suspended WikiLeaks' account. Visa Europe said on Tuesday it had suspended payments to the WikiLeaks website.

(Additional reporting by Mia Shanley in Stockholm and Sudip Kar-Guptaand Angus MacSwan in London; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

Dutch to try five Somalis for pirate hijacking

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch prosecutors will try five suspected Somali pirates on charges of hijacking a South African yacht last month, prosecutors said on Sunday, adding that the suspects were en route to the Netherlands.
The five men, aged between 20 and 30 years, are accused of hijacking the South African yacht Choizil off the coast of Tanzania on November 7, the prosecutors said in a statement.
A European Union anti-piracy task force in the area, which included a Dutch marine ship, rescued one South African from the yacht but two other crew members were taken ashore as hostages.
Prosecutors said the five suspects were among 20 Somalis held by the Dutch ship. The others were released because there was insufficient evidence against them.
Heavily-armed gangs have seized dozens of vessels in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden in recent years.
Somalia lacks the legal infrastructure to carry out trials and captured pirates are often released because of disagreements over which country should try them.
Most of the pirates who have been captured have been tried in Kenya or Seychelles. A Dutch court has sentenced five Somalis to five years in prison for piracy. A U.S. court sentenced a Somali for piracy last month, and ten suspected Somali pirates have gone on trial in Germany.
(Reporting by Gilbert Kreijger; Editing by Sara Webb)

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Pakistan orders arrests of police in Bhutto case

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has ordered the arrest of two senior police officers on allegations they failed to provide adequate security for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto before her 2007 assassination, a prosecutor said on Sunday.
Bhutto's assassination was one of the most shocking events in Pakistan's turbulent history and remains shrouded in mystery.
"The court has issued warrants and these are non-bailable. They can be arrested anytime," special prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali told Reuters.
"I argued that they were responsible for Bhutto's security and they failed to make foolproof security arrangements and they ordered the crime scene to be hosed down despite resistance from other officials."
Court officials were not immediately available for comment.
Ali named the two police officials as Saud Aziz, former police chief of the city of Rawalpindi, where the attack took place, and one of his deputies, Khurram Shahzad.
Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack after an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007, weeks after she returned to Pakistan after years in self-imposed exile.
A report by a United Nations commission of inquiry released in New York in April said any credible investigation should not rule out the possibility that members of Pakistan's military and security establishment were involved.
It heavily criticized Pakistani authorities, saying they had "severely hampered" the investigation.
The Pakistani government may be reluctant to act on a call by a U.N. commission to investigate thoroughly the assassination because of fear of its own powerful security forces, analysts say.
The initial investigation blamed a Pakistani Taliban leader and al Qaeda ally, Baitullah Mehsud, for Bhutto's murder.
Mehsud was killed last year in a missile attack launched by a U.S. drone aircraft.
The U.N. report said no-one believed the 15-year-old suicide bomber who killed Bhutto acted alone, and the failure to examine her death effectively appeared to be deliberate, but the commission did not say who it believed was guilty.
(Editing by Michael Georgy and Daniel Magnowski)

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China Internet cafe blast kills 6, injures 38

BEIJING (Reuters) – Six people were killed and 38 others injured in an explosion at an Internet cafe in southwest China, state news agency Xinhua said on Sunday.
The explosion occurred late on Saturday in Kaili city in Guizhou province, Xinhua said, citing local police. It was caused by illegally stored chemicals in an adjacent room.
"The explosion and ensuing fire totally obliterated the cafe," Xinhua said, adding that the blast also shattered the windows of nearby residential buildings.
Police have detained a man for the illegal possession of the chemicals and have taken the cafe's boss and manager into custody for questioning, it added.
(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee, Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

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Huge Israel forest fire kills dozens: rescue services

HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) – A huge fire swept through a forest in northern Israel on Thursday, killing up to 40 people, many of them prison guards who were trapped in a bus trying to flee the flames, security services said.
Israel called on Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Russia to send aircraft to help them battle the blaze, which was raging out of control on hills approaching the city of Haifa more than seven hours after it first took hold.
Local fire services mobilized emergency crews from across the country, and fire trucks tried desperately to reach the scene, weaving through heavy rush hour traffic as night fell.
"It's a disaster on a scale that we have never seen before," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
"We are harnessing all the forces of the state to deal with this disaster and rescue those who are injured and to stop the fire," he added.
At least 2,000 people were evacuated from local towns and villages as the flames leapt through the dense, pine woodland, fanned by strong winds off the Mediterranean sea.
A collective farm, Kibbutz Beit Oren, was razed to the ground and television showed pictures of a bus and car, which had been carrying prison guards and rescuers when they were engulfed by the flames. Both vehicles were gutted.
Click image to see photos of the forest fire

AFP/Moran Mayan
"ENORMOUS DISASTER"
"There are a lot of casualties. We are talking of about 40 people," said Police Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, adding that a handful of people were still missing.
Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for national police, said two of those missing were police officers and that a senior commander of the Haifa force had been critically injured.
The Magen David Adom paramedics confirmed just 22 deaths.
"What is happening here behind us is there's a fire that is blazing out of control, moving toward the west ... It is an enormous disaster," Aharonovitch added.
Israeli media said it was the biggest forest fire in the country's history, with some 7,000 acres of land destroyed.
Some 500 inmates from the local Damon prison were moved to safety in the early afternoon as the blaze spread.
A jail official said guards from around Israel had been attending a course at the penitentiary and had been driven straight into the flames in their doomed bid to escape danger.
Some Israeli news sites said the prison guards had been heading toward to the prison trying to help with the general evacuation when they were surprised by the fast-moving blaze.
Israeli media said the fire started around midday, possibly in an illegal dumping ground in the Carmel Hills.
Israel has experienced unseasonably hot weather for months and it was the driest November in 60 years, meaning the flames were able to spread quickly through the tinder-dry countryside.
"We've lost control. I am asking all firefighters throughout Israel to phone in and report for duty," said Reshef Hezi Levi, spokesman for the Haifa area firefighters.
(Additional reporting by Douglas Hamilton)
(Reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Writing by Crispian Balmer; editing by Myra MacDonald)

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Lawyer for WikiLeaks' Assange denies warrant valid

LONDON/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – The lawyer acting for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denied on Thursday that Sweden had issued a valid European arrest warrant for alleged sex crimes, despite Stockholm's insistence that legal difficulties with the warrant were resolved.
Swedish police earlier said technical problems hindering the arrest of the 39-year-old Australian had been ironed out, and a newspaper report said he was in Britain.
But in an interview with Reuters, his London lawyer Mark Stephens, who would not divulge his whereabouts because of death threats against him, said no warrant valid under Swedish, European or international law had been issued.
"There is no arrest warrant against him. There was an Interpol red notice, which is not a warrant, alerting authorities to monitor his movements," Stephens told Reuters.
"The arrest warrant was sent back by Scotland Yard (London police headquarters) because it did not comply with the law and was defective."
Assange spends much of his time in Sweden, and earlier this year was accused of sexual misconduct by two Swedish women. Swedish prosecutors opened, then dropped, then re-opened an investigation into the allegations.
Sweden has authorized a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of sexual misconduct. But Assange has not been formally charged with any crime in Sweden.
Stephens also told Reuters his client had not been informed of the allegations or shown any evidence against him. He said his client would be happy to meet Swedish prosecutors but they had not wanted to meet him.
"We are in this position where we have never been told what the allegations are against him, we do know that he hasn't been charged, we do know that he has only been asked for as a witness," he said.
The Independent newspaper said Assange had arrived in Britain in October, and had given police his contact details. It cited police sources who said they knew where Assange was staying. He is believed to be in southeast England, it said.
TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
In Sweden, Assange's efforts to have an arrest order quashed met defeat when the High Court declined to hear the case.
"The High Court has not granted a leave to appeal, so the Svea Court of Appeals ruling still stands," High Court official Kerstin Norman told Reuters. The Svea Court of Appeals is one of six courts of appeal and covers the Stockholm area.
The Independent, citing unnamed sources, said Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) needed clarification about the European Arrest Warrant issued by Swedish prosecutors before British police could arrest Assange.
The Metropolitan Police and Soca declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
Tommy Kangasvieri, head of the international unit at the Swedish National Police force, said the problem over the arrest warrant had been solved.
"We have sorted this out and it will be completed during the day," he said, adding that Swedish police had not received any official word that Assange was in Britain.
Swedish Prosecution Office spokeswoman Helena Ekstrand said the office had received no information on Assange's location. "...the arrest warrant still stands and we are looking for Julian Assange," she said.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, interviewed by BBC Radio 4, said Assange had failed to cooperate with a U.S. investigation into the leak.
"We've made clear in an exchange this weekend with Mr Assange the fact that he is in possession of classified material of the United States government, it's stolen property and we have asked him to return it. He has declined to do that and we would investigate the implications of this."
(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft, Michael Holden and Michel Rose; editing by Tim Pearce)

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