PEACE NEGOTIATIONS WATCH

Armenia/Azerbaijan Armenia, Azerbaijan lawmakers say peace needed in Nagorno-Karabakh: report

Burundi Burundi; Peace Process On Track But Economy Needs Help, Annan Says

Security Council asks secretary-general to assess how U.N. can support Burundi peace agreement

Chechnya Warplanes hunt for Chechen infiltrators into neighboring region, four soldiers killed in latest Chechnya fighting

Congo Congo-Kinshasa; UNHCR Helps First Group of Refugees to Return to DR of Congo

Congo-Kinshasa; Ministerial Delegation Pushes for National Unity in Kisangani

Congo-Kinshasa; UN Calls for More Aid to People of Northeastern DR of Congo

Georgia/Abkhazia Russia peacekeepers rotating in Georgia-Abkhazia conflict zone

Ethnic Albanians worried over strong nationalist showing in Serbian elections

Macedonia Voluntary handover of weapons finishes with "relative success" in Macedonia

Morocco Western Sahara; Talks on Establishment of Confidence-Building Measures

Sri Lanka says international donors shouldn't lose patience with stalled peace process

Sudan Sudanese government and rebels agree on how to share Sudan's oil revenue

Peace Negotiations Watch is prepared by the Public International Law and Policy Group in cooperation with American University and is made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Armenian and Azerbaijani lawmakers meeting in Scotland said Saturday that peace is the only acceptable resolution to their conflict over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, Britain's Press Association reported. The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan held last week in Geneva the first top-level meeting between the countries for over a year on the 14 year-old conflict over the enclave.

Armenian President Robert Kocharian and his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev failed to reach a deal but pledged to continue talks. The dispute centres on who should control Nagorno-Karabakh, a sparsely-populated range of mountains with a mainly ethnic Armenian population which is formally part of Azerbaijan. A five-year war between the two countries ended with the enclave under Armenian control in 1994. An estimated 35,000 people were killed in the fighting and one million people fled their homes.

More intensive activities of Russia as a co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group for Nagorno-Karabakh will have positive results, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Vilayat Guliyev said on the national television on Sunday. "Russia has more possibilities and resources to do that than other states," he remarked. "The region still has close relations with Russia, and this is especially true for Armenia, a party to the Karabakh conflict. In that light a more active role of Russia will bring good results." Russia is an influential nation, and the Karabakh conflict originated on territory of the former Soviet Union, whose political successor Russia is, the minister said. "So we would like to use possibilities of the neighbor country fuller," he added.

Stepanakert (Xankandi), 26 December: The military and political balance which has developed in the zone of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and the existing geopolitical and geo-economic realities minimize the risk that hostilities will resume, the minister of foreign affairs of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic (NKR), Ashot Gulyan, said in an interview with Arminfo news agency.

Gulyan expressed the conviction that Azerbaijan has understood the hopelessness of a military solution to the problem. They also understand that everlasting enmity and confrontation are not advantageous to any side as it is absolutely obvious that truce violations will have catastrophic consequences for the entire region. The Azerbaijani leadership should take into account that if they resume hostilities, they will not be supported by the international community, which is interested in stability in the region, he went on to say. Speaking about Azerbaijani ex-President Heydar Aliyev's role in establishing the cease-fire regime in the conflict zone, Gulyan said that Aliyev was indeed inclined to a peaceful solution to the conflict in the last few years. However, one should not forget that at the beginning, he, just like his predecessors, could not resist the temptation to solve the Karabakh problem by force. Nevertheless, the truce was established in the period of his rule, and the cease-fire regime made it possible to conduct talks in one or another format for almost 10 years, Gulyan stressed.

"What will happen to Azerbaijan after Heydar Aliyev's death and the end of his era? What impact will it have on the Karabakh settlement? It is difficult to give a clear answer to these questions because it seems to me that a lot will depend on whether the new Azerbaijani president will manage to cope with his internal problems," Gulyan said.

Hope is emerging for a democratic Burundi, with politics based on peaceful competition rather than ethnic exclusion, but this fragile progress could be undermined by the country's poor living conditions, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today. In a new report to the Security Council on the situation in Burundi - which is trying to recover from a decade of civil strife that left between 250,000 and 300,000 people dead - the Secretary-General says the country's transitional institutions are working well. But he warns that Burundians must experience an improvement in their living conditions or the budding peace process may be jeopardized. The country's gross domestic product shrank by 20 per cent between 1990 and this year, farmland is scarce, and rates of HIV/AIDS infection and adult illiteracy are high. "There is a risk that the hopeful signs of peace which have now begun to appear could be lost unless they are accompanied by improvements in the living conditions of the population as a 'peace dividend,'" he says.

Burundi this year saw the peaceful transition of power when Pierre Buyoya stepped down as President on 1 May and was replaced by his Vice-President, Domitien Ndayizeye. More recently, the country's Transitional Government and its biggest rebel group, le Conseil National pour la Defense de la Democratie - Forces pour la Defense de la Democratie (CNDD-FDD), signed a comprehensive ceasefire agreement.

The Secretary-General says the security situation has "considerably improved" since 8 October, when the first Pretoria Protocol on political, defence and security power sharing between the Transitional Government and the CNDD-FDD was signed. "New alliances are being created and the people of Burundi are adjusting themselves to the new situation." Mr. Annan reiterates his call for another armed rebel group, Parti pour la liberation du people Hutu - Forces nationals de liberation-Agathon Rwasa (PALIPEHUTU-FNL), to begin unconditional ceasefire talks immediately. Noting many challenges lay ahead, including the implementation of the ceasefire accords, he calls on the international community to help fund the African Mission in Burundi (AMIB), a peacekeeping force deployed by the African Union this year.

Burundi's main Hutu rebel group has agreed to stop stockpiling and using landmines, the organisation in charge of monitoring an agreement under which armed groups can reject the use of anti-personnel mines said Tuesday. Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), which last month signed a comprehensive peace accord with the government and joined Burundi's interim, power-sharing regime, on Monday signed a "deed of commitment" rejecting landmine use under the Geneva Call, the equivalent for non-state groups to the Ottawa Convention, a statement by the group monitoring the treaty said. Burundi's second largest rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), which has refused to hold talks with the Bujumbura government, has said it will soon ratify the treaty, Geneva Call said.

Landmines laid by both rebel and government troops during Burundi's 10-year civil war claimed hundreds of lives left many more maimed. Geneva Call appeals to armed groups worldwide to adhere to a total ban on antipersonnel mines. Such groups, which are not allowed to adhere to the Ottawa Treaty, can sign a "Deed of Commitment for Adherence to a Total Ban on Anti-Personnel Mines and for Cooperation in Mine Action" or deposit their own mine ban declarations under the Geneva Call. So far, 24 rebel groups around the world -- in Burma, India, Iraq, the Philippines, Somalia and Sudan -- have signed deeds of commitment. Geneva Call is backed by private foundations, the governments of Britain, Canada, Italy and Switzerland, the European Commission and the city of Geneva.

Seven suspected members of Burundi's only active Hutu rebel group were arrested overnight by fighters of a rival group that has made peace with and joined the government, officials and witnesses said Thursday. Members of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) -- the former rebel group -- also killed a suspected thief and wounded two others Tuesday in the eastern Ruyigi province, according to a local government official. The FDD's arrest of seven people suspected of being members of the National Liberation Forces (FNL) -- which has refused to negotiate with the government -- took place late Wednesday in Gatumba, a town 20 kilometres (13 miles) west of the capital, witnesses there told AFP. The witnesses said the FDD had come with a list of the people to be detained.

The local mayor, Louis Niyonzima, said "security forces are aware of the arrests. I myself have received assurances that no harm will come to these seven people." Gatumba residents seemed worried by the incident. "FDD rebels cannot just arrest whoever they want, when they want," protested one, the only inhabitant who dared speak publicly, even if anonymously. "It looks like a settling of scores," he added.

Speaking about the killing and wounding of suspected thieves in Ruyigi, one army officer said: "The situation is pretty fluid. The politicians have given us no instructions about this, so we have to let such things happen." Earlier this month, two suspected FNL members were arrested by police after tip-offs by the FDD. All these events illustrate the new found cooperation between the government and the FDD, who signed a comprehensive peace accord on November 16. Burundi's civil war, which ignited in 1993, has claimed more than 300,000 lives, most of them civilians.

Human Rights Watch Monday accused both the army and rebel groups in Burundi of committing serious war crimes during the country's civil war and said the recent peace agreement should not have granted them immunity from prosecution. The army, which is dominated by members of the minority Tutsi groups and rebels from the majority Hutu community are "guilty of serious war crimes" according to a new HRW report on Burundi that covers the June to November period this year.

"The recent political agreement between the major parties in Burundi's civil war should not have granted immunity from prosecution for such blatant and widespread crimes," the 63-page Human Rights Watch report said. "The abuses such as those described in the report cannot go unpunished," HRW's advisor for Africa Alison Des Forges was quoted as saying in the report titled 'Everyday Victims: Civilians in the Burundian War'.

The HRW report singled out the two main rebel groups -- Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), which is now part of the government, and the National Liberation Forces (FNL), which remains at war because it refuses to discuss peace with the interim government -- as the main culprits. The FDD signed a comprehensive deal with the administration of President Domitien Ndayizeye on November 16 and its leaders have now joined an enlarged government while its fighters will make up 40 percent of a revamped army.

"During recent fighting, government soldiers and rebels have been responsible for deliberate attacks on civilians in violation of international humanitarian law, including killings, rape and other violence to persons, looting, and causing forced flight," the report said. More than 300,000 people have been killed in Burundi's civil war, most of them civilians.

Security Council asks secretary-general to assess how U.N. can support Burundi peace agreement

The U.N. Security Council asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan to assess how the United Nations can help cement a peace deal in Burundi. In a statement Monday, the 15-member council took note of a Dec. 4 statement to the council by South Africa's deputy president, Jacob Zuma. He said the Burundi peace process has entered an "irreversible stage." Zuma, who has played an active role trying to end Burundi's civil war, said peace had been brought to at least 95 percent of Burundi and told the council that U.N. peacekeepers should take over the 2,650-strong African force. Zuma said presidential power also had been transferred from a minority Tutsi to a majority Hutu. Only one rebel group - the National Liberation Forces - has refused to sign the Arusha peace deal reached last month.

The statement read by Bulgaria's U.N. Ambassador Stefan Tafrov, the current council president, welcomed the formation of the transitional government and progress toward ending the 10-year civil war, which has killed at least 200,000 people. The statement urged the rebel holdouts to join the peace process "without further delay" and asked Annan to assess "how the United Nations might provide the most efficient support for the full implementation of the Arusha peace agreement." The council made no direct reference to taking over peacekeeping in Burundi, but left open the possibility. Council members approved Annan's recommendation to renew the year-long mandate of the U.N. peace-building mission in Burundi, which has about 25 international staff and 30 local staff.

War broke out in October 1993 after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a Hutu. Most of the more than 200,000 people killed have been civilians. Despite being in the minority, Tutsis have controlled Burundi for all but a few months since the central African nation gained independence from Belgium in 1962.

The United Nations repatriated 151 Burundian rebels from neighboring eastern Congo on Sunday as part of process to bring stability to the region which has been beset by years of conflict. Burundian Hutu rebel groups fighting in the 10-year civil war in Burundi have used eastern Congo as a base to launch attacks into their country. The insurgents also fought alongside Congolese government forces in Congo's civil war and have contributed to the killings and atrocities that have beset eastern Congo. The insurgents repatriated were driven from the Congolese town of Bukavu to the Burundian border town of Gatumba where they were handed over to a Burundian government agency responsible for helping the rebels return to their home villages, said Eliane Nabaa, a spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Congo.

"If this operation goes well then it will make possible the regular repatriation of Burundian combatants," Nabaa told The Associated Press by telephone from Bukavu. Another 20 rebels, all of them child soldiers, will remain at U.N. camp in Bukavu while U.N. officials trace their families in Burundi, she said. The rebels repatriated Sunday has spent 11 months at the camp after handing themselves over to the U.N. mission in Congo. It is not clear how many Burundian rebels are based in eastern Congo.

The war in Congo broke out in August 1998 and at one time drew in soldiers from at least six African nations, including neighboring Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, which accused the Congolese government of supporting rebels from their countries. The conflict ended after the foreign troops withdrew, and the Congolese government and former Congolese rebels formed a transitional government in June. But violence has continued in eastern Congo as rival Congolese tribal militias fight each other and rebels from Burundi and Rwanda continue to murder and rape villagers and fight with the Congolese armed groups.

The conflict in Burundi broke out in October 1993 when rebels from the central African nation's Hutu majority took up arms after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected leader, a Hutu. But peace deals have also taken hold in Burundi, with three rebel groups, including the largest - the Forces for the Defense of Democracy - agreeing to join the transitional government and integrate their forces into a new national army. Only one main rebel group, the National Liberation Forces, is still fighting in that war. Despite being in the minority, Tutsis have effectively controlled Burundi for all but a few months since independence in 1962.

Warplanes hunt for Chechen infiltrators into neighboring region, four soldiers killed in latest Chechnya fighting

Russian warplanes hunted Monday for a band of Chechen fighters who broke into a neighboring region and killed nine border guards last week, while rebel attacks in Chechnya killed four soldiers and wounded seven in the past day. Federal outposts were attacked 15 times, killing four soldiers and wounding five, an official in the Kremlin-appointed Chechen administration said. Two other soldiers were wounded in a clash with rebels near Tazen-Kala in the southern Vedeno district, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Daily violence persists in Chechnya despite Kremlin claims that peace and stability are returning. Russian troops and Chechen police daily fall victim to small-scale skirmishes and mine explosions engineered by rebels. A police unit in the Chechen capital Grozny was attacked Sunday night and one officer died, the Chechen official said. Also Sunday, a shell exploded on the territory of a district police department, killing one officer and wounding two. It wasn't immediately clear whether the explosion was an attack. Rebels opened fire on a car carrying bodyguards who work for Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, killing two guards and wounding two, the official said. Kadyrov is hated by the rebels for his links with Moscow.

Meanwhile, the Federal Security Service, the successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB, said an air search for rebels in the Dagestan region that neighbors Chechnya was expanded Monday due to the clear weather, the Interfax-Military News Agency reported. The security service said additional border guard teams had been brought in, and the forces were using thermal imaging and other surveillance devices to pinpoint the rebels, allegedly still hiding in the region's thick forests and gorges. In Chechnya, Russian artillery pounded suspected rebel positions in the Nozha-Yurt, Kurchaloi, Vedeno and Itum-Kale districts. At least 150 people were rounded up on suspicion of aiding the rebels during security sweeps in the previous 24 hours, the Chechen official said.

Meanwhile, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported that a 26-year-old woman seized nine months ago, allegedly by Chechen rebels, was released. Disappearances have been a major problem in Chechnya, with the abductions blamed both on federal forces and Chechen rebels. No further details were immediately available about the circumstances of the woman's release. Russian forces returned to Chechnya in 1999 after incursions into Dagestan and a series of apartment bombings blamed on rebels. The troops had left after a 1994-96 war ended in failure, giving de-facto independence to Chechnya.

Russian security forces stepped up control measures along the border between Chechnya and Dagestan Wednesday to prevent a group of separatists from entering the breakaway republic, the interior ministry said. Severe controls were imposed on road traffic and goods transfers, while other unspecified measures were taken along the mountainous border the two southern Russian republics share, Ismel Chaov, spokesman for the Dagestan interior ministry, said as quoted by Interfax news agency. The militants, numbering between 40 and 60 and reportedly both Chechen rebels and Dagestani militants, killed nine Russian border guards last Monday and took several people hostage, later releasing them and disappearing into the mountains.

Earlier, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took responsibility for two suicide attacks this month in southern Russia and Moscow which killed 52 people, according to the pro-independence website kavkazcenter.com. "Our martyrs' fighting brigade carried out two attacks under our operation Boomerang in Yessentuki (southern Russia) and in Moscow, aimed at forcing the Russians to make peace," Basayev said. He went on: "I emphasize that we did not aim to terrorize anyone. Our goal was to wipe out the accomplices to genocide of the people of Chechnya," the separatist republic where Moscow has been bogged down since 1999 in putting down a guerrilla war.

The Kremlin's top advisor on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said he could not confirm the claim "100 percent," but that authorities were focusing on Basayev in their investigations. He added that "it cannot be excluded that Basayev is trying to take credit for terrorist actions" carried out by others, he told a news conference.

The Pyatigorsk region of southwest Russia, where a bombing of a commuter train killed 46 people on December 5, was chosen "because that is the site of the Belaya Lebed detention center where hundreds of Chechen hostages are held," the warlord said. On the December 9 attack in Moscow, Basayev said: "The target of our martyred sister in Moscow was the Duma," the lower house of parliament for which elections were held two days earlier. It was possible, he said, that "something prevented her from walking the 50 metres to her goal" before setting off the explosives that killed six people and wounded 14 others after the legislative elections in which President Vladimir Putin's allies won a sweeping victory.

Congo-Kinshasa; UNHCR Helps First Group of Refugees to Return to DR of Congo

The United Nations refugee agency is preparing to launch the repatriation of 432,000 people who fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during a bitter war, and has arranged for a pioneering group of nearly 300 to fly to the country. The excited group of 298 returnees arrived in Kinshasa yesterday after seven years in exile in neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR). They were warmly welcomed by Mayor Nku Imbie, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative David Kapya and other UNHCR and Congolese officials. "We have peace and unity," Mr. Imbie told the returnees. "We are appealing to our compatriots who think that the war is not yet over to return home to help rebuild our nation."

Tuesday's repatriation is the first significant return of Congolese refugees to be organized by UNHCR since the installation of a transitional government in Kinshasa under a peace deal signed in April this year. More than 1,000 Congolese refugees in CAR have signed up for repatriation, especially to the DRC's Equateur province. UNHCR must first sign tripartite agreements with the countries hosting the Congolese refugees to outline the legal framework for return and reintegration. The host countries at present are Tanzania with 149,000 refugees, Zambia with 54,000, the Republic of Congo with 85,000 and CAR with 10,000.

The Belgian Parliament has offered its assistance to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in its drafting of a future national constitution, Belgian Senate President Armand De Decker told IRIN on Wednesday in Brussels, following a four-day mission to the Congolese capital, Kinshasa. "The Congolese Senate has an historical role to not only serve as a forum for arbitration outside of all political tendencies inside this huge country, but also to pre-draft a future constitution," De Decker said. "That's why I traveled to DRC with two other colleagues at the invitation of Congolese Senate President Marini Bodho, to propose our assistance."

De Decker said the assistance could include an exchange of national counterparts specialized in constitutional law. During the mission, from 12 to 15 December, De Decker also met DRC President Joseph Kabila. "He told me that he wants elections to be held before the end of 2005, and that there were no major obstacles to reaching that goal," De Decker said. He added that while there were "many pretexts" to delay the elections, such as the national census, the organization of elections was primarily a question of political will. "Current international support will not last forever if too much time is lost," he warned.

According to IRIN sources, local elections could be held in April 2005, parliamentary elections in July 2005 and presidential elections in September 2005; other sources suggest that local and legislative elections could be organized on the same day. De Decker also said that among the Congolese senators, he found that "minds were really open on the question of nationality", including Congolese Tutsis, known as Banyamulenge, as well as Europeans who had resided in the DRC for a long period.

Congo-Kinshasa; Ministerial Delegation Pushes for National Unity in Kisangani

A ministerial delegation of the political, defence and security commission of the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) arrived on Monday in Kisangani, northeastern Congo, "carrying a message of hope and reconciliation across the country and gauging the state of national reunification at the provincial level", Azarias Ruberwa, one of the transitional government's four vice-presidents, told reporters. The DRC was left devastated by nearly five years of war. Following the signing of a peace accord on 17 December 2002 in Pretoria, South Africa, a national unity government was inaugurated on 30 June this year. It is due to lead the country during a two-year transitional period culminating in nationwide democratic elections.

In addition to holding a meeting with provincial authorities on ways to improve security in the region, the delegation met with the federation of local merchants as well as with city judges, who have been participating in a nation-wide strike for over a month. It also held meetings with religious leaders, NGOs and military officers. Finally, the delegation paid its respects to victims of a lightning storm that struck the city on 12 December, leaving five people dead and seven people hospitalised, DRC Human Rights Minister Madeleine Kalala told IRIN by telephone from Kisangani. The government has provided each of the survivors with US $250 to help cover medical costs. The delegation was scheduled to continue its tour, travelling next to Mbuji-Mayi, in Kasai Oriental Province, and Kananga, in Kasai Occidental Province.

Congo-Kinshasa; UN Calls for More Aid to People of Northeastern DR of Congo

A United Nations humanitarian mission to a strife-torn northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is calling on aid organizations to help people there whose lives are being held together by a "desperate thread." The people of Haut Uele, especially its main town of Isiro, are complaining of continued harassment by the army and police and the levying of unauthorized taxes by the administration, the mission says in a report released today.

The area is governed by the former rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-National (RCD-N) which is now part of the national transitional government. According to the report, the locals also say military recruitment continues, especially of children. The mission is urging humanitarian agencies to open offices in Isiro, where it says the reduced staff of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the international non-governmental organization MEDAIR feel they are working alone to meet major humanitarian needs.

The residents are suffering from a lack of clean water, the mission says, and the majority of households lack access to a balanced, protein-rich diet. More than 100,000 workers are unemployed due to a drastic strife-induced decline in the area's agricultural industry, which used to comprise growing and processing cotton, coffee and palm oil, the report says. The joint mission, which visited Isiro from 26-28 November, included the UN Deputy Special Representative to the DRC, Lena Sundh, German Ambassador Loretta Loschelder, and representatives from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). With the advent of the dry season in January, many displaced people will be on the move and are likely to spread meningitis, which experts have confirmed to be spreading in the region, the mission says. A separate OCHA report raises concern over an estimated 6,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in Watsa, northeast of Isiro. Further details are difficult to obtain because no mission has been able to visit the area.

Georgia/Abkhazia

Russian peacekeepers in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone has began a planned rotation. A battalion of the Maikop brigade which has been on duty in Abkhazia for more than a year, on Wednesday was dispatched to the place of its permanent disposition, Acting Commander of the Collective Peacekeeping Force (CPF) Maj.-Gen. Sergei Namokonov told Itar-Tass.

A send-off ceremony for the servicemen many of whom were awarded medals for the peacekeeping operation, took place at the railway terminal of the Ochamchira district centre. The Russian peacekeepers' mandate in the conflict zone will become termless starting from January 2004, the CPF headquarters said. Over 3,000 Russian peacekeepers are fulfilling here tasks to ensure peace and stability.

The situation in Georgia is a factor Russia's security greatly depends on, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said at a meeting with Georgia's acting President Nino Burdzhanadze in Moscow on Thursday. "You have had a meeting with President Putin. You must have discussed security issues, including military security," Ivanov said. He recalled that over 90 Russian peacekeepers from the collective peacekeeping force were killed in Abkhazia while on duty.

The idea of pressure on Abkhazia is "utterly unacceptable and can merely aggravate the already strained situation in the region," Ivanov said. "The Russian leadership regards the continuation of the peace-keeping operation by the CIS in the area of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict as a means to ensure the conditions for its resolution by political means," the Defense Ministry's press-service quotes Ivanov as saying. Ivanov did not rule out other CIS member-states might participate in the peace-keeping operation. He noted the "decisive role the peace-keepers were playing in terms of maintaining the cease-fire and conditions for the negotiating process between the Georgian and Abkhazian sides," the press-service said.

Burdzhanadze said time was ripe to discuss and resolve the accumulated problems in the sphere of bilateral relations. "I do see that Russia has the desire to build a new relationship with Georgia. We have the same intention. We are prepared to put our relations on a new, constructive track," Burdzhanadze said. The Georgian leader said she was very grateful to President Putin for the invitation to visit Moscow for talks on the whole range of Russian-Georgian relations. "The relationship between the defense ministries of the two countries are not especially warm and this problem also has to be resolved, too."

Amid mounting criticism over restrictions on the press and independent groups in the war-torn province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, the Indonesian Military (TNI) said on Monday that the presence of foreign teams monitoring next year's elections in the province was not necessarily needed. Aceh Martial Law Administrator Maj. Gen. Endang Suwarya argued that in accordance with the country's legal system, the government had established bodies to deal with elections, including the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu), therefore "we should believe in those bodies instead of relying on foreigners."

"Indonesia is a great country, so why don't we trust our people to deal with our internal problems? We do not need foreign monitoring teams in Aceh before, during and after the 2004 elections," Endang said, as quoted by Antara. "I don't understand why the presence of foreigners to monitor the elections in Aceh is considered to be an important issue," Endang said. "What is good for foreigners is not necessarily good for us," he said. The two-star general was answering a question on whether the TNI would allow monitoring teams from neighboring countries to visit the province ahead of elections to ensure that Acehnese would be able to exercise their political rights properly.

KPU has scheduled the legislative election for April 5, 2004, and has planned to organize a two-phase presidential election in July and September respectively. A total of 24 political parties have been declared eligible for the elections. President Megawati Soekarnoputri decided in November to extend martial law in Aceh for another six months, arguing that the government was responsible for maintaining security and order in the province before, during and after the elections. Since the government imposed martial law in Aceh in mid-May to crush the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), more than 40,000 TNI troops and policemen have been deployed to the oil and gas-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra. Rights activists and political observers have criticized the decision for fear that a massive deployment of government soldiers would affect the democratic climate across the territory.

Indeed, Aceh will be the first and only province in the country's history to face a military offensive during the democratic events in 2004. New York-based Human Rights Watch has criticized the imposition of martial law in Aceh, saying that under martial law, the government and military had effectively barred nearly all independent and impartial observers (including diplomats), as well as international humanitarian aid workers, from the province.

Meanwhile, the TNI announced on Monday that one soldier and four suspected rebels were killed in several armed encounters between government troops and GAM rebels across the province on Sunday. TNI Aceh operations spokesman Lt. Col. Ahmad Yani Basuki said that the four suspected rebels died in a gunfight on Sunday in southern Aceh. Also on Sunday, guerrillas ambushed a group of government troops in eastern Aceh and one soldier died in the gunbattle. Four other GAM rebels were also arrested over the weekend in eastern Aceh, he said. Meanwhile, a civilian who worked as a driver for journalists was found dead on Saturday after going missing for several days. His death remained a mystery, but a reporter in Banda Aceh who saw his body believed that he had been shot in the head. The rebels launched their independence bid in 1976 after Jakarta refused to give increased autonomy to the province. About 10,000 people have died in the conflict and repeated efforts to forge a peace deal have collapsed.

Indonesia painted a positive picture of its war in Aceh on Friday saying security and humanitarian conditions are improving and that the military has done much to redress rights abuses. The three-page statement comes in response to a Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday, in which Acehnese refugees in Malaysia were quoted as saying that extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and attacks on civilians were widespread in Aceh. Indonesia called the claims in the report baseless, adding that most of the refugees were in Malaysia before the country launched its military offensive in May and did not represent the feelings of the province's 4.1 million people. "The security situation has improved. Freedom has been restored and people can travel from village to village freely," a statement by Indonesia's Foreign Ministry said.

Indonesia's military offensive aims to eradicate the separatist Free Aceh Movement from the oil- and gas-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra. Since the crackdown began, the military claims it has killed nearly 1,200 suspected rebels, while losing only 50 soldiers and 16 police officers. The rebels say most of those killed have been civilians. Human rights groups have accused both sides of abuses including kidnapping, rape and extrajudicial killings. Foreigners have been restricted from visiting the province and reporters have been harassed for coverage critical of the government and barred from traveling to rebel-held areas.

Indonesia did not deny that rights abuses occurred but insisted that the military has charged wrongdoers and the media has been allowed to extensively report on abuses. It said many civilians killed were likely rebels in disguise and that the rebels themselves were committing widespread abuses. It also suggested that Human Rights Watch is one of many groups that supports separatists and is helping fuel the breakup of Indonesia, much like it accused international groups of doing during East Timor's successful bid for independence. "These are the groups which do not want to see a united, peaceful and prosperous Indonesia," the statement said.

The government launched its offensive after a five-month peace pact faltered over rebels refusal to give up their independence bid and the government's refusal to pull its troops back to defensive positions and move ahead with promised autonomy measures. The rebels launched their independence bid in 1976 after Jakarta refused to give increased autonomy to the province. About 12,000 people have died in the conflict and repeated efforts to forge a peace deal have collapsed.

Indonesian officials who came to Sweden this week to hand over more evidence linking Aceh separatists exiled there to crimes back in the Aceh province will go home empty-handed, separatist spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah told AFP Saturday. "We are Swedish citizens. We have rights," Abdullah said, insisting that Swedish authorities would not arrest or deport the approximately 50 leaders of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), including the movement's founder Hasan di Tiro, living in Sweden. The GAM leaders, who have been directing the Aceh region's struggle for independence from Indonesia since 1976, came to the Scandinavian country as political refugees in the late 1970s, and almost all of them have since obtained Swedish citizenship.

A delegation of five Indonesian national police and foreign ministry officials arrived in Stockholm on Thursday and handed over to head prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand more than 1,000 pages of what they called new evidence linking the Aceh separatists to terror acts in Aceh and other parts of Indonesia. The delegates will be leaving Sweden on Monday. Last June, another Indonesian delegation gave Sweden what it described as "proof" of links between the GAM leaders and such terror deeds as the bombing in 2000 of the Jakarta stock exchange, which killed 10 people. GAM has denied any involvement in that bombing.

"They say we're involved in illegal activities, but the Indonesians are the ones who are terrorizing our people," Abdullah said. "They've conducted mass-executions, and are holding many, many political prisoners," he added. A Human Rights Watch report published Thursday backs up his charges, alleging gross abuses, including extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, beatings and arbitrary arrests, by troops fighting the separatist rebels in the Aceh province. Indonesia has described the charges as baseless. Since the Indonesian military declared martial law and launched an all-out offensive to crush GAM on May 19 this year, more than 1,100 guerrillas have been killed, 2,000 have been arrested or have surrendered and almost 500 weapons have been seized, according to the military. Lindstrand told Swedish media Thursday that he would decide by the middle of January 2004 whether or not to launch an investigation into the Indonesian charges against the exiled Aceh rebels.

Human right groups have cited a dramatic increase in the number of rights violations following the imposition of martial law in Indonesia's restive Aceh province seven months ago. Jakarta extended martial law in Aceh, a province of 4.2 million people, after an initial six-month period expired in November, so it could take on the rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, which has been fighting for an independent state since 1976. The offensive is Indonesia's largest military campaign since the invasion of East Timor in 1975. More than 30,000 military troops and 12,000 police personnel are involved in the fight against some 5,000 armed rebels.

Political analysts say they are skeptical the Indonesian government will achieve what it hasn't in the past. "The heavy-handed military operation would only trigger a new wound and other fresh political sentiments," said Munir, a noted human rights activist, who likes many Indonesians goes by one name. "Military operation cannot solve all the problems."

Nevertheless, six months after an all-out military assault against GAM, martial law has made the towns in the province much safer, said one journalist who returned from the province. Nightlife has returned to normal and people stay outdoors until dawn; night buses ply the main road down the coast to the neighboring province of North Sumatra. In the first months of martial law, the road was sprinkled with burnt vehicles, and drivers were so afraid they would move only in daylight and only with a military escort.

The military has said more than 1,500 people - mostly rebels -- have been killed since the crackdown was launched seven months ago. Nearly 2,000 rebels were either captured or surrendered. Observers, however, have questioned the military's toll, pointing out that relatively few weapons have been seized, and that senior rebel leaders are still at large.

Authorities have restricted international organizations, the international media and even Indonesian human rights groups since June, making it difficult to verify reports of widespread human rights abuses as well as military's claims of a better performance in the province. The New York-based Human Rights Watch in a report issued last week accused the troops of waging a campaign of extra-judicial killings, kidnapping and torture in Aceh, targeting mostly young males and forcing thousands to flee their homes. "We fear that the abuses we have uncovered against the civilian population may be just the tip of the iceberg," said Brad Adams, executive director of the group's Asia division.

The 50-page document, primarily based on testimony of Acehnese refugees interviewed in Malaysia, is filled with details of atrocities committed by the military, which had pledged to uphold human rights during the campaign. "I saw one of the soldiers handcuff the ankles of this man, and then another soldier held him by his feet and swung him against a tree," a young Acehnese man recounted. "The soldier did this many times so that the man's head was hitting the tree. His brains were coming out of his head, until he was dead." Indonesia dismissed the HRW report as "groundless." "I respect groups like Human Rights Watch but I appeal to them to carry out their job fairly," said Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "We would be grateful if they care to seek clarification from us."

Observers and human rights advocates said they hoped that after next summer's elections, Indonesia will revert to a more flexible approach on Aceh. Todung Mulya Lubis, a noted human rights campaigner, said he hoped elections in the province would be delayed until martial law was lifted. "I don't think the Acehnese people will be given freedom of expression if the government insists on maintaining martial law in Aceh," he said. "Once the public questions the legitimacy of the elections in Aceh, I'm afraid that such situation will only benefit the secessionist movement."

In addition, observers said, GAM had already been crushed militarily in 1977, and again in the early 1990s, but military brutality inflicted on one generation had sown the seeds of rebellion in the next. "Martial law has not been able to defeat GAM. The brutality of Indonesian troops has raised our spirits to fight Indonesia," GAM's in-exile state minister Malik Mahmud, told the weekly Tempo magazine from his base in Geneva, Switzerland. "We have been fighting for 27 years. The word 'defeated' does not exist in our dictionary," he said. "Despite all the troops and police Indonesia sent to Aceh, we have persevered. We are not defeated yet."

Another grievance that could be addressed unilaterally by the government is the perception that military and police personnel enjoy impunity for human rights crimes. Aceh, situated at the northern tip of Sumatra, 1,100 miles northwest of Jakarta, has had a long tradition of rebellion against central authority, be it Dutch or Indonesian. It won greater autonomy in December 2001 in a bid by the government to end the rebellion. Both the rebels and the Indonesian government signed an agreement on a framework to discuss peace in December of last year. At the time it was signed, there were major unresolved differences; GAM saw autonomy under Indonesian sovereignty as the starting point for negotiations, while the Indonesian government saw it as the final point.

BANDA ACEH : An Indonesian television journalist who had been held hostage by Aceh separatist rebels for six months was killed in a skirmish between guerrillas and troops on Monday, the military said. Ersa Siregar, a senior reporter for RCTI, was killed in a clash betweeen marines and Free Aceh Movement (GAM) fighters in East Aceh, said Lieutenant Colonel Firdaus Komarno, an Aceh military spokesman. He said the marines were combing the area when they encountered a group of guerrillas. A firefight broke out and two bodies were found later, one of them a rebel and the other Siregar.

Siregar, cameraman Fery Santoro, their driver and the wives of two military officers were abducted on June 29 in the province, where troops in May launched a major offensive against the guerrillas. The driver escaped from the rebels earlier this month. There has been no word on the fate of the others. Aceh operational military commander Brigadier General George Toisutta told a press briefing late Monday night that he had personally identified Siregar's body, which had been taken to a military hospital in Lhokseumawe.

Toisutta said Siregar had been shot in the chest, neck and leg during a "routine patrol." He said troops also found Santoro's press cards and clothes and he believed the cameraman had been with the rebel group during the skirmish. Troops confiscated four automatic rifles from the rebels, he said.

GAM operational commander for East Aceh Ishak Daud told AFP in Jakarta that Siregar had been suffering from malaria. He said that GAM had recently asked officials from The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Indonesian Red Cross to pick up the hostages at a meeting point in an undisclosed area in East Aceh. But the meeting failed to take place neither group obtained approval from the Indonesian military, he said. Earlier this month the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) demanded that the government remove obstacles which it said were preventing the release of Siregar and Santoro. "The government's delay in facilitating these journalists' release is inexcusable and inexplicable," federation president Christopher Warren wrote in an open letter to President Megawati Sukarnoputri. The Brussels-based lobby group said it had brokered a deal with GAM for the release of Siregar and Santoro in August. "However, the journalists are still being held captive because the Indonesian military, the TNI, will not allow the free movement of human rights organisations in the province to secure the release of the two journalists," it said.

The government imposed martial law on the province when it launched its offensive and for months severely restricted the movement of aid and other groups and of foreign journalists in the province. Siregar, 52, who was married with three children, was the third journalist to be killed in the province since May. The body of a TVRI cameraman who had been abducted from his office by unidentified gunmen soon after the offensive began was found in a river with torture marks. Another Indonesian journalist was killed in an accident involving an army armoured car. Military officials at the hospital banned reporters from viewing Siregar's corpse but showed his press card and clothes to reporters, a local journalist said. A spokesman for RCTI said the station was planning immediately to fly the body back to Jakarta. – AFP

Click here to access the Aceh Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law and Policy Group.

Click here to access the Aceh Peace Module prepared by the Public International Law and Policy Group.

The government in strife-torn Ivory Coast has approved laws on the eligibility of presidential candidates and on rural land ownership, in line with a peace plan for the divided country, officials said Friday. The two issues were identified in peace talks last January as major stumbling blocks to restoring peace after a rebellion that split the west African state last year. The legislation on the presidency will go from the transitional cabinet to the National Assembly, while President Laurent Gbagbo has announced that the land law will be put to a referendum. The law on presidential candidates would allow contenders to run for election if they have either "a father or mother of Ivorian origin", brings the minimum age down from 45 to 35 and scraps the upper limit of 75. If passed, the principles agreed at the talks will enable opposition leader Alassane Ouattara to take part in an election.

Existing constitutional provisions on presidential candidates insist that both parents of any candidate must be of Ivory Coast origin. This caused sharp controversy surrounding Ouattara, Gbagbo's main rival, who was prevented standing in 2000 due to doubts about his national origins because his father originally hailed from another west African state, Burkina Faso, just north of Ivory Coast. Now the condition has been relaxed so that only one of the two parents need be from Ivory Coast.

Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, has been in crisis since a failed coup in September 2002 escalated into civil war. While west African and French peacekeepers deployed in March and a ceasefire has held since July, the country remains split between the rebel-held north and west and the south, controlled by Gbagbo. A current 1998 land law prohibits foreigners from purchasing arable land, while those possessing such land before current regulations came into force cannot pass it on to descendants. The amendment now announced allows heirs of foreigners to inherit property.

The peace accord identified presidential eligibility and land law as among the principal causes of the crisis. The peace deal, which led to the setting up of a reconciliation government two months later, also foresaw changes in nationality provisions to allow foreign men married to Ivory Coast women to acquire Ivorian nationality themselves. Gbagbo, who earlier delegated powers to his prime minister Seydou Diarra on a six-month renewable basis, last week signed a decree confirming Diarra in the post until a presidential election scheduled for October 2005.

The reconciliation process has stalled since the rebels quit the unity government three months ago, accusing Gbagbo of hoarding power and failing to implement the accord. Once a model of stability and prosperity for west Africa, Ivory Coast has been crippled by the 15 months of political and military crisis, with only the barest of public infrastructure existing beyond the economic capital Abidjan. It was meanwhile announced in the economic capital Abidjan that the European Union will provide 12.5 million euros (15.5 million dollars) towards the upkeep of the west African peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast. EU officials here said the EU contribution would essentially help to to cover soldiers' pay. Bilateral contributions of member-states or third countries will provide the remainder of the sums required to cover costs which cannot be met by the EU, officials said.

Ivory Coast's former rebels have decided to resume their role in government but concerns remained Tuesday over disarmament, a possible leadership dispute and a planned trip to rebel zones by President Laurent Gbagbo. After meeting Monday in their central stronghold Bouake, the former rebels announced they would end a three-month boycott of cabinet meetings of the unity government created in January. "Wishing to give our country the chance for peace to which we all aspire, the New Forces invite their ministers to return, from (Monday) to the government of national reconciliation," the former rebels, using the name they took in January, said in a statement Tuesday. "The New Forces reaffirm our willingness to work serenely towards a durable peace in Ivory Coast."

The unity government was installed in April to help bring an end to 15 months of civil war that have split the west African country in two and crippled the world's top cocoa producer. It stumbled in September with the New Forces' withdrawal from cabinet meetings, accusing President Laurent Gbagbo of hoarding power and refusing to implement January peace accords to end the war. Monday's decision was widely hailed both within the volatile west African state and by the international community, which hopes to return Ivory Coast to its position as a regional powerhouse both for its international seaports and cocoa-based economy that had been the second largest in west Africa. "We welcome with satisfaction the decision by the New Forces to reintegrate in government so as to fulfill their role in the national reconciliation process in Ivory Coast," said French foreign affairs spokesman Cecile Pozzo di Borgo on Tuesday.

But lingering rifts remain, among them the question of disarmament. Since their failed attempt to oust Gbagbo in September 2002, the rebels have held the country's north and western zones, while the government controls the south. Both sides have begun to pull back heavy armaments from a 640-kilometer (400-mile) ceasefire zone patrolled by French and west African troops but the storing of weaponry and the cantonment of fighters have resulted in little progress. Another source of concern is an apparent split between the political and military sides of the New Forces. Ibrahim Coulibaly, who spearheaded the first-ever coup in December 1999, continues to wield enormous influence in northern Ivory Coast. His supporters, mostly among the military cadre, have in the past week caused tension over the leadership of the rebel movement, taking to the airwaves to anoint him as the "president of the New Forces," although he holds no official leadership title.

Backers of New Forces secretary general Guillaume Soro, who serves as communications minister in the unity government, insist that it is he who holds the reins. As the daily Le Front noted Tuesday, "the strife between Soro and IB (as Coulibaly is colloquially known) could be fatal for the unity of the New Forces." "We cannot exclude the possibility that it could implode," said the newspaper, which is nominally aligned with the former rebels. An imminent planned visit to rebel territory by President Gbagbo also remains contentious as the New Forces say they have yet to be officially informed of his itinerary. They have, however, not opposed that he travel to the second city Bouake, which Gbagbo last week dubbed a "symbol of the divided country."

Ivory Coast government and rebel troops were Thursday completing their pull back from a ceasefire line ahead of an evaluation as to whether disarmament to end 15 months of civil war can proceed. The two sides opened a two-week "pre-disarmament" process on December 13, dismantling more than 100 roadblocks lining the roads in the west African state and storing heavy weaponry that had been lined up along the 640-kilometer (400-mile) confidence zone running from east to west.

Guns have been mostly silent since a ceasefire was declared in July, but Ivory Coast remains hamstrung by geographic and ethnic divisions that have left the north and west in the hands of former rebels and the south controlled by the army of President Laurent Gbagbo. Thousands of people were killed in the 15 months of civil war in the world's top cocoa producer, and an estimated one million people were displaced.

From Friday, joint teams of military leaders and French and west African peacekeepers patrolling the ceasefire will spend three days evaluating whether either side has neglected any of the confidence-boosting measures established December 10 to end tensions along the buffer zone. Ivorian armed forces spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Aka N'Goran said in a statement received late Wednesday that all of the obligations had been fulfilled on the government side of the ceasefire line -- from the cantonment of fighters to the storing of tanks and heavy weaponry. "The forces of defense and security have dismantled all of the checkpoints... regrouped heavy weapons in major areas and all of our armed servicemen have returned to their barracks," he said. "Without question we are ready for inspection."

A highly placed source told AFP Wednesday that all but one of the roadblocks in the zone controlled by the rebels, known since stalled January peace accords as the New Forces, had been torn down as of this week and that heavy weaponry had also been pulled back from their side of the ceasefire zone. But whether the evaluation will precede complete disarmament has yet to be seen. An independent disarmament commission has yet to hold a single meeting, and the rebels refused to even consider disarming until their ministers returned to the government they quit in September.

New Forces ministers decided Monday to end their three-month boycott of cabinet meetings of the unity government, but there are no meetings planned until early next year. Gunbattles between government troops and still-unknown assailants in Abidjan on December 11 which left some 20 dead also sparked doubts that the goal of disarmament would remain elusive. But where in 1999 there was a military coup and in 2002 a ceasefire that kept people at home after 6:00 pm, this Christmas is breeding hope in the war-weary population that peace will prevail. "We had Santa Claus wearing a bullet-proof vest in 1999, we had Christmas under ceasefire last year," a restaurant owner in the economic capital Abidjan told AFP. "This year, I have to believe in peace."

Pakistan said Thursday it was willing to begin expanded discussions on the future of Kashmir, the divided Himalayan province at the heart of its five-decade feud with India, a new step in improved relations between the South Asian giants. Top officials said Pakistan was willing to discuss other solutions than those laid down in a long-standing U.N. resolution that calls for a referendum in the disputed region to determine its future. "We are for the implementation of the U.N. resolution on Kashmir, but if India is serious in solving the issue of Kashmir, other things can also be discussed," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press. He gave no details, and there was no immediate response from India.

Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since they gained independence from Britain in 1947. The U.N. resolution calls for Kashmiris in both Pakistani- and Indian-held Kashmir to decide through a vote whether a united Kashmir should join predominantly Hindu India or Islamic Pakistan. The vote has never taken place because of India's objections. Islamic rebels have been battling in Indian-held Kashmir for independence or merger with Pakistan. India accuses Pakistan of arming the guerrillas - which Islamabad denies - and has said it will only start talks with Pakistan if it stops the infiltration of rebels into India across the border from Pakistan.

Ahmed stressed that Pakistan still supports the U.N. resolution - central to its stance on Kashmir since it was adopted by the U.N. Security Council in 1948. Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said Pakistan had not dropped its demands based on the U.N. resolution, but was willing to show "flexibility." "We have been saying that the issue of Kashmir should be solved for durable peace in the region," said the information minister. "It all depends on the seriousness of India."

The two countries nearly fought a fourth war last year, but in recent months tensions have eased. Last month the two armed forces began a cease-fire at the military line that divides Kashmir, where they had routinely shelled each other for years. They have also restored some transportation links that were severed at the start of 2002 and have reassigned ambassadors to each other's country. India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will visit Pakistan for a summit of seven South Asian leaders in early January. During British rule, Kashmir was a princely state, and at the partition of the subcontinent its Hindu leader opted to join India although most Kashmiris are Muslims. It also has minorities of Hindus and Buddhists.

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf Monday reaffirmed the primacy and centrality of Kashmir dispute for durable peace in South Asia, the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported. Speaking to leaders form the Pakistan-held Kashmir, Musharraf said Pakistan has a principled stand on Kashmir and asserted that nobody can coerce Pakistan into giving up Kashmir. "The way forward is finding a lasting and durable solution of Kashmir in accordance with the aspirations of the Kashmiri people,” he said.

He said New Delhi should show flexibility for resolving the dispute and expressed the hope that the Indian public opinion would influence their leaders to enter into a dialogue process for durable peace in South Asia. Musharraf said Pakistan and India should start the dialogue process; accept the centrality of the Kashmir dispute, eliminate whatever unacceptable to the two sides and the Kashmiri people and arrive at a solution acceptable to both countries and the people of Kashmir.

After inching towards detente for most of the year, nuclear foes India and Pakistan ended 2003 with dramatic new prospects of a way forward on the thorny issue of Kashmir. The moves come as Pakistan prepares to host the Indian premier at a regional summit -- a scenario unthinkable the previous year when the neighbours came to the brink of war. Since Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee offered an olive branch in April, ambassadors have been reinstated, transport links are almost fully revived, and the border has been busy with MPs, artists, intellectuals and religious leaders crossing for goodwill visits. Furthermore, the guns have gone silent on the boundaries in disputed Kashmir for a record three weeks -- an unprecedented ceasefire between Pakistani and Indian troops along the stunning Himalayan territory's dividing lines, including the restive Line of Control (LoC).

Most dramatically, President Pervez Musharraf offered in an interview last week to back down on Pakistan's half-century old demand for a referendum in divided Kashmir. He is ready to discuss alternatives, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid told AFP. Vajpayee has even indicated he may be open to meeting Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit next month, according to Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan.

Casting a shadow over permanent peace prospects is the territorial dispute over Kashmir, which both sides claim. Until this week the 56-year old dispute appeared intractable, with neither side budging on decades-old policies including Pakistan's demand for a referendum, in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolutions dating back to 1948. New Delhi has always refused to countenance Islamabad's demand that Kashmiris be given a plebiscite on rule by India or Pakistan. It says Kashmir is an integral part of the Indian state. But Musharraf's surprise offer last week to back down on that demand and consider alternatives, provided India show some reciprocal flexibility, has opened up a way forward in the dispute, observers said. "What he is saying is 'let us begin talks, you bring your proposals and we bring our proposals and let us see what is acceptable to both sides'," Kamal Matinuddin, former diplomat and chairman of the Institute of Strategic Studies, told AFP.

"There cannot be a final settlement between India and Pakistan without some resolution of the Kashmir issue," Pakistani political commentator Muhammad Afzal Niazi told AFP. Musharraf's Kashmir policy revisal offer was slammed by his opponents but praised by leading newspapers. "The fact is that Pakistan's invocation of the resolutions has long been a non-starter," The English-language Daily Times wrote Friday. "Bearing the cross of the resolutions is no more possible." While the ceasefire since November 26 and the offer of flexibility on Kashmir has reinvigorated the otherwise sluggish peace process, analysts were circumspect as to its significance.

"The ceasefire is holding, this has been acknowledged, but this has been overplayed for diplomatic purposes," said Khalid Mahmud from Pakistan's Institute of Regional Studies. "The LoC is basically a ceasefire line and therefore both armies are supposed to observe a ceasefire but they have not been until now." Former Indian high commissioner (ambassador) to Pakistan, G. Parthasarthy, saw a chance for a significant move forward if the rival leaders meet during SAARC. "If they could set in move a process that will take things forward, that itself would be substantial." The former envoy did not anticipate a summit between Pakistani and Indian "leaders any time soon," but he believed peace moves "would go ahead" provided there were no attacks by Islamic militants on significant Indian targets.

Islamic rebels battling Indian rule in Kashmir were blamed for the deadly attack on India's parliament in December 2001 which triggered the 10-month military standoff between the nuclear neighbours. New Delhi blamed the attack on Pakistan-based rebels, but Pakistan denied any involvement. S.K. Singh, a former Indian foreign secretary and another former high commissioner to Islamabad, believed prospects for talks were tied to next year's Indian parliamentary elections, due before next October. "I think our people would think in terms of what will help them in the elections," he said.

Violence has fallen substantially in revolt-racked Indian Kashmir since the start of a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan territory a month ago, India said on Monday. "Not only have the borders remained absolutely quiet for the first time, militancy-related incidents within the state showed a 32 percent decline as compared to the corresponding period last year," an official statement said. The statement came as police said there were nine deaths overnight and Monday in Muslim-majority Indian Kashmir where an insurgency against New Delhi's rule has raged since 1989.

The ceasefire along the Line of Control (LOC) which separates Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir and on the Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas went into effect on November 26. The move was seen boosting peace efforts between the nuclear-capable neighbours who came close to war in 2002 over Kashmir. The statement reported a "substantial decrease in the level of (rebel) violence" since the ceasefire's start with 221 incidents such as grenade and rocket attacks compared to 342 during the same period in 2002.

Along the border where India and Pakistan routinely traded artillery and other small-arms fire, often killing civilians, there has been no firing. In all, 172 people have died in the restive region since the truce began, including 106 rebels killed by Indian troops, the statement said. During the same period in 2002, 224 people died, including 127 rebels. The rebels and Indian forces have said the truce does not apply to clashes between them. Among the dead reported on Monday were an alleged police informer, a militant released from jail last year and a policeman -- all killed by suspected rebels, a police spokesman said. Five militants and a woman bystander died during three gunfights between Muslim rebels and Indian troops, police said. In Jammu, winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir, six people were hurt when suspected rebels hurled a grenade that landed near a bus stand, police said. Officials say more than 40,000 people have died in Indian Kashmir since the start of the revolt while separatists put the toll at between 80,000 and 100,000.

An international prosecutor indicted a former ethnic Albanian rebel leader for alleged kidnapping, illegal weapons possession and other charges, a U.N. official said Thursday. Shefket Musliu, leader of an ethnic Albanian insurgency in part of southern Serbia known as the Presevo Valley, was charged with committing crimes against individuals on four separate occasions from 2000 to 2002, said Izabella Karlowicz, a U.N. spokeswoman in Kosovo. He was indicted along with three associates for mistreatment, several counts of kidnapping and illegal possession of weapons, Karlowicz said. The four also were charged with criminal association.

Musliu was arrested in April by NATO-led peacekeepers in eastern Kosovo for posing a threat to the security in the province and has been in detention since. He and his associates will be tried by a panel of international judges in the district court of Gnjilane, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) east of the province's capital, Pristina, and will be kept in detention pending trial. International judges and prosecutors are appointed to deal with sensitive cases in Kosovo. A date for the trial has not been set yet, Karlowicz said.

Musliu headed the insurgency in the Presevo Valley in a bid to unite the area with neighboring Kosovo. He moved to the eastern Kosovo town of Gnjilane after fighting between rebels and Serb forces ended with a NATO-brokered peace deal in May 2001. Musliu is among some 20 individuals - mainly former rebels from Kosovo, Macedonia and southern Serbia - included in U.S. President George W. Bush's 2001 executive order identifying people deemed threats to peace in the Balkans by supporting extremist violence. Bush banned any financial transactions with the listed individuals. The Presevo Valley borders Kosovo, which technically is part of Serbia-Montenegro - the union that replaced Yugoslavia - but has been run by the United Nations since NATO bombing halted a Serb crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

Ethnic Albanians worried over strong nationalist showing in Serbian elections

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders were wary and worried Monday by the strong showing in Serbia's elections of extreme nationalists previously allied with former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Kosovo's government urged the international community to "follow closely the developments in Serbia because of the threat that winning forces represent for security, peace and stability in the region." An extreme nationalist party that supported Milosevic's Balkan war campaigns - including the 1998-99 war in Kosovo - triumphed in Sunday's parliamentary elections, according to official results released Monday.

The Serbian Radical Party won 81 seats in Sunday's ballot for the 250-seat parliament, leaving behind pro-Western groups that toppled Milosevic three years ago. Milosevic, together with Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the Radicals, are standing trial for war crimes at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for their roles in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The Radicals' election triumph in Serbia can create troubles within Serbia, but also in the region still recovering from a decade of war and destruction, warned Blerim Shala, a prominent ethnic Albanian political analyst.

"The results of the elections are a sign that Serbia's attempt at reform since the end of the Balkan wars have failed," Shala said, cautioning that the current composition of political forces will bring "continuation of Serbia's radical policies toward Kosovo." Kosovo formally remains a province of Serbia-Montenegro - a loose alliance that replaced Yugoslavia - and has been administered by the United Nations since June 1999, after a NATO air war halted a crackdown by Serb forces on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. The war left some 10,000 ethnic Albanians dead and thousands of others missing.

Click here to access the Kosovo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law and Policy Group.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called on countries to live up to their pledges for peacekeepers in Liberia, saying that security remains a problem in the west African nation. Annan said in a report Thursday that there had been a "slow response" from countries to contribute to the UN force in Liberia, which is expected to reach around 15,000 troops but is currently less than half that number. The UN chief said continuing violence pointed to security difficulties in Liberia, where former president Charles Tayor was forced out of office and into exile in Nigeria in August.

"Armed groups have yet to demonstrate their full commitment to the peace process, as is apparent from the ongoing skirmishes, the continuing serious violations of human rights and the selfish pursuit of lucrative posts in the government and public corporations," he said. Annan added that the delay in filling out the force "raises concern" about other possible future peacekeeping missions elsewhere in Africa, including in Burundi, Ivory Coast and Sudan.

The UN Security Council voted unanimously Monday to maintain sanctions on Liberia that were slapped on the former regime of now-exiled president Charles Taylor. But it prepared the way for their lifting once the fragile peace begun when Taylor left in August takes hold, and the government makes strides in cleaning up what UN envoy Jacques Klein called the "illegality" he left behind. Klein said the council had "no choice" but to keep the sanctions in place while the interim government of Gyude Bryant tries to deliver transparency and accountability.

He said Bryant would have to transform the system so that revenue from Liberia's vast wealth of resources, including primarily diamonds and timber, went to goverment coffers. "What Taylor did is drive all the Liberians out of the lumber business and then sold the concessions cheaply to foreigners. He did the same thing with everything," Klein said. "Now Chairman Bryant has to kind of do a review and say, which of these concessions was fairly bid on -- and are these people paying taxes into the treasury -- and which ones did Taylor scam?"

The sanctions include an embargo on arms imports and a ban on the sale of rough diamonds and timber from Liberia. In its resolution Monday, the Security Council tweaked the sanctions so that they could be removed later when benchmark conditions are met. The arms embargo can be lifted when the ceasefire is being "respected and maintained" and former fighters have been disarmed and demobilised. A UN scheme to disarm fighters was put on hold last week because of heavy turnout. The diamond ban can be repealed when Liberia has taken steps to join the Kimberley Process, an international framework aimed at stopping the trade in "blood diamonds" used to finance conflict. The council said the ban on Liberian timber could end when revenues are not used to fuel conflict but for "legitimate purposes for the benefit of the Liberian people."

The Security Council will review progress and a panel named by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will report to the council before June. It said the revisions were made because of the "changed circumstances in Liberia," including Taylor's exile to Nigeria, steps towards peace and the formation of the transitional government. Klein told reporters that a donors' conference was planned for New York in February to raise money to repair the infrastructure of the country, which he said was also saddled with 85 percent unemployment.

U.N. peacekeepers took up positions in a rebel-held Liberian town Saturday for the first time since arriving in this West African nation in August to secure a peace deal aimed at ending years of war. The deployment comes a day after Liberia's interim head of state, Gyude Byrant, met with rebels and convinced them to allow peacekeepers into rebel-held territory. On Thursday, Liberians United for Reconciliation rebels stopped Pakistani peacekeepers from deploying in Tubmanburg, 20 miles north of Monrovia. The rebels were demanding senior posts in key government departments, including police, immigration and port management.

On Saturday, a contingent of Pakistani troops rolled into Klay, a small town 20 miles northwest of the capital. The town has been under rebel control for over six months. U.N. peacekeeping commander Gen. Daniel Opande continued on to Tubmanburg and said peacekeepers would also move units there soon. Saturday's deployment "begins the long road to reunite the whole country together," Opande said. A smaller rebel group, the Movement for Democracy, controls patches of territories along the coast southeast of the capital, Monrovia. The Pakistani commander in Klay, Irfan Azam, told residents his troops would do their best to keep the peace. "We can assure you that you will never feel let down," Azam said. One small group of rebels danced, sang and smoked marijuana after peacekeepers forced them to dismantle a checkpoint. "We are tired with the bush and want to go back to school, we want the troops to deploy," said an 18-year-old fighter who declined to be named.

Peacekeepers first arrived in Liberia in August to secure an accord that ended several years of bloody war and saw former President Charles Taylor exiled to Nigeria. Bryant, a Monrovia businessman, was appointed head of a transitional administration on Oct. 14 that is expected to arrange elections in 2005. The U.N. force is supposed to grow to 15,000 by next month, but much of Liberia remains in the hands of rebels and militiamen who supported Taylor's ousted government. Representatives from both rebel groups have been appointed Cabinet positions in Bryant's administration.

Macedonians have voluntarily handed in about 7,500 firearms and 100,000 rounds of ammunition during a six-week campaign aimed at getting weapons out of the hands of civilians and former fighters in this still tense Balkan country, officials said Tuesday. The effort, however, yielded just a fraction of the estimated 170,000 weapons believed to still remain in secret caches since an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001 brought the nation to the verge of civil war, said Col. Blagoja Markovski. "It's been a relative success," Markovski said of the operation that began Nov. 1 and finished Monday. The effort was supported by the main political parties and international organizations overseeing Macedonia's peace process.

Fighting broke out in this former Yugoslav republic when militants from the ethnic Albanian minority took up arms demanding broader rights for their community, about a quarter of Macedonia's 2 million people. A Western-designed peace pact ended the fighting by granting greater rights to the ethnic Albanians and getting the rebels to hand over weapons - ultimately about 3,400 - to NATO peacekeepers. Much more weaponry, however, is still illegally held. In October, parliament approved tougher penalties for violators - up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to US$5,500.

The campaign warned people of the punishments they could face should they hold on to their weapons. But softer measures were also taken: lottery tickets were handed out to those who complied, with a sedan car, computers and motorbikes among the prizes. The collected weaponry included 3,589 rifles, 2,336 handguns, 55 grenade launchers, 27 machine guns and mortars, Markovski said. "The fact remains that not all of the estimated illegal weaponry has been collected," he said. "Organizing another such operation should be considered." The collected weaponry will be destroyed, except for an occasional antique piece that may end up in a museum, he added.

A former ethnic Albanian rebel convicted by Macedonian authorities surrendered Tuesday to NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo, officials said. Xhehmail Hyseni, a former commander in the National Liberation Army (NLA) that led a seven-month insurgency in Macedonia in 2001, surrendered to US troops in eastern Kosovo, a statement from the peacekeepers said. "He was previously convicted, in absentia, for crimes committed in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia," the statement said.

Hyseni, also known as Commander Jimmy Shehu, was taken to the largest US military base in the region, Camp Bondsteel, for questioning and will be later handed over to United Nations police in Kosovo. The conflict in Macedonia ended with a Western-sponsored peace deal, which ensured measures to increase the Albanian minority's presence in the political and economic life of the former Yugoslav republic. Kosovo has been under UN and NATO control since June 1999 after NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia forced then president Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw troops from the Albanian dominated province.

A high-level UN mission led by Special Representative of the Secretary-General Alvaro de Soto and including senior UN refugee agency staff is leaving today to meet with officials in Algeria and Morocco to discuss UNHCR's proposals to establish a series of confidence-building measures to help re-establish person-to-person contacts between Western Saharan refugees living in desert camps in western Algeria and their relatives back in the territory of Western Sahara. This week's planned talks follow very encouraging meetings on the issue that took place last week in Geneva involving Mr. de Soto, UNHCR and Polisario officials.

Under the confidence-building measures initiative, first proposed in 2000, we want to establish telephone and personal mail services between the refugees and their relatives in Western Sahara. We also want to organise family visits so refugees and their relatives can finally resume contacts and travel back and forth on a limited basis using UN aircraft. After last week's positive discussions with Saharan officials, we hope this week's meetings will allow us to finally set firm dates to kick-off both the phone and mail services. We would also like to see the proposed family visits begin as soon as possible. We believe that the implementation of the confidence building measures will help restore links between the long-divided Saharan community.

An estimated 165,000 Western Saharan refugees have spent the last 28 years in five camps located around Tindouf, in western Algeria's vast desert. These people have virtually no direct contact with relatives who remained in Western Sahara. Life for the refugees, historically nomads but now mostly confined to camps and dependent upon humanitarian aid, is very difficult. UNHCR and its partners provide water, health care, education, food aid, and other basic services in the camps. Funding and assistance levels are frequently barely sufficient for these long-exiled refugees.

The first summit of five north African leaders in the Arab Maghreb Union in nearly a decade was canceled at the last moment on Monday, apparently because of deep differences among member states. The decision to cancel the Tuesday summit was made by foreign ministers from the member countries of the group, known by its French acronym UMA, gathered in the Algerian capital, officials close to President Abelaziz Bouteflika said. The UMA also includes Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia but has been an almost moribund organisation for political and economic cooperation since its foundation in 1989.

Officials would give no explanation of the indefinite postponement of the summit, which would have been the first of its kind since 1994. The last planned meeting, in June, was called off at Libyan leader Moamer Kadhadi's request. Algerian newspapers said Monday that neither Kadhafi, whose government had just announced its readiness to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow surprise UN inspections of its nuclear sites, nor Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Taya had been expected to show.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI was to have been represented by his foreign minister, Mohamed Benaissa, because Rabat has refused to attend any UMA summits since 1994 because of deep disagreement with Algiers over the Western Sahara. The Western Sahara is a mainly desert territory annexed and occupied by Morocco since Spanish settlers pulled out in 1975. Algerian governments have supported an independence movement which has proclaimed a Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in the phosphate-rich land.

The Mauritanian government is meanwhile at odds with Libya, accusing its secret service of financing a foiled coup bid against Ould Taya in June. A Libyan foreign ministry official on Friday told AFP that the charge was "absolutely baseless". Colonel Kadhafi and other leaders in the UMA, who support the Palestinian cause, have been unhappy since Mauritania decided to renew diplomatic relations with Israel without consulting them over this step. By Friday, Bouteflika had already been saying in Paris that the summit would "take place among the people who come", while Algerian Foreign Minister Akdelaziz Bekhadem had been careful to speak only of a "presidential council", not a summit.

The deepest rift in the union, which has been chaired by Algeria since Libya turned down the task at its last summit in Tunis in 1994, remains that of the Western Sahara, where a referendum on independence conducted by the United Nations has been stymied for decades by disagreements. Bouteflika has stressed that he is committed to the UMA and considers the Western Sahara to be purely a UN matter, but the mass circulation daily Liberte on Monday summed up the mood evident in Algiers, describing the UMA as "a poisoned chalice where (the heads of state) all blame each other" for its problems.

The international Red Cross on Wednesday urged the release of the remaining Moroccan prisoners held by the Polisario front in the annexed western Sahara region, warning that it was acutely concerned about their health. The appeal by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) followed visits by the agency earlier this month to 291 prisoners held by the Polisario, which is is fighting for independence for Western Sahara. "The ICRC remains acutely concerned about these prisoners' physical and mental health and once again appeals for them to be released without delay, in accordance with international humanitarian law," it said in a statement.

One hundred and eighty-eight of the 614 Moroccans still in captivity have been held for more than 20 years, according to the ICRC. The prisoners received blankets and medical help from the aid workers during the visits between December 2 and 16, and were able to send out 1,900 messages to relatives. A group of 300 Moroccan prisoners of war were freed freed by the Polisario Front in Algeria in November under Red Cross supervision, in the latest of a spate of releases this year.

Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony which is mostly desert and has a population of 300,000, was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Repeated efforts by the United Nations and United States to bring peace in the region have foundered, principally on the fate of more than 100,000 refugees who now live in Polisario camps in Algeria and on the territory's status.

Philippines President Gloria Arroyo said in an interview published here Tuesday that she has prepared a draft bill for a general amnesty to help heal divisions in her country's society, and insisted on winning the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Arroyo also told Gulf News, "If I win the presidential election (in May 2004), I will change the constitution to make it a parliamentary democracy. "My two and a half years as president have shown that we need to change two areas in the Philippines to ensure that it does not lag behind - the political and the economic."

Arroyo's plan for a parliamentary democracy was accompanied by two key statements, the daily said: a "healing policy" to reunite the Philippines "divided policy" with a general amnesty, coupled with a refusal to allow the peace process with the MILF to fail. "I have prepared a draft bill for a general amnesty," said Arroyo, who was speaking during a two-day visit to Bahrain. "I want to heal the divide in society, not just between the MILF and other such groups in Mindanao but between the forces that brought me to power and the ones against Edsa, the 'people power' movement," she told the daily. The bill will be submitted in the next few weeks, the daily quoted Arroyo aides as saying.

Arroyo said that Bahrain's King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa had offered to play a major role in monitoring the peace process with the MILF as well as redeveloping "the bread basket of the Philippines in the aftermath of peace." "There will be no compromise on the sovereignty and integrity of the Philippines, no secessionist movement that violates the sanctity of the Philippines," she said, in reference to making peace with her country's largest Muslim separatist group. Both sides are preparing to resume formal peace negotiations brokered by Malaysia, which has also agreed to send a team to monitor truce violations between Manila and the MILF. The MILF is the country's main Muslim insurgent force and the talks are aimed at ending a 25-year rebellion that has ravaged the southern island of Mindanao. Arroyo is the unlikely underdog in the May vote, trailing in the opinion polls behind Fernando Poe, who wants to become the country's second movie star president after his disgraced friend, Joseph Estrada.

President Gloria Arroyo said Wednesday that the Philippine government's scheduled peace talks with Muslim separatists next month remained on track despite a spate of deadly clashes in the south. The announcement came as the military and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) agreed to halt the fighting that had raged since the weekend, claiming more than a dozen lives. Manila had signed a ceasefire with the 11,900-member MILF in July and expects to hold peace talks with the rebel group in Malaysia early next month. On the recent violence, Arroyo said in a written statement: "This is an isolated situation that will not derail the peace process."

Military vice-chief of staff, Lieutenant General Rodolfo Garcia said that both sides had agreed to disengage after a series of clashes near the town of Datu Piang in Maguindanao province. However, he conceded that "the situation is still tenuous," and that he was to meet MILF counterparts in the joint ceasefire committee to discuss the renewed fighting. The military said four soldiers and nine MILF guerrillas were killed on Tuesday after the rebels attacked troops seeking refuge in a mosque near Datu Piang. It said 12 soldiers and government militiamen were also missing and one of its helicopters had also been damaged.

But MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said five soldiers had been killed in Tuesday's skirmish and several others captured. Four captured soldiers would be released next week in the presence of the media to prove they were not mistreated, Kabalu said. He had warned on Tuesday that "if fighting continues, it would threaten the peace talks".

Arroyo insisted, however, that government forces had been conducting a law-enforcement operation and had not been targeting the MILF. In the past, the military had accused the organisation of harbouring terrorists and other criminals. "Our troops have been in hot pursuit of members of the Pentagon kidnap gang," the president said, referring to a group that abducted a local businessman in the southern city of Cotabato last week. "The ceasefire committees of both sides are also actively engaged in dialogue, so that potential hostilities will not escalate," she added. "It proves that the strict enforcement of law and order can be done side by side with the peace process." Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Lucero said that operations against the Pentagon gang would continue despite the cessation of hostilities against the MILF.

Serbia & Montenegro

Presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark testified that Slobodan Milosevic knew in advance about the 1995 massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, according to transcripts released Thursday. Clark's testimony gave U.N. prosecutors the most direct evidence yet linking the former Yugoslav leader to the genocide. Milosevic, during cross-examination, accused the former NATO commander of a "blatant lie," and said he had never discussed Srebrenica with Clark, according to the transcripts.

The retired American general testified as a prosecution witness in closed sessions at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Monday and Tuesday. The testimony was made public after being reviewed by State Department lawyers, who the Bush administration said did not request any changes. Tribunal officials said one segment of the court hearings was not included, but it was not related to Clark's testimony.

Prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said Clark's testimony was "extremely important for us," and experts agreed it was the most direct evidence so far indicating Milosevic had advance knowledge of the intention to kill Muslim captives at the U.N.-protected zone at Srebrenica. In an operation commanded by Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in one week in July 1995, and tens of thousands of women were expelled. It was the deadliest civilian wartime massacre in Europe since World War II.

Clark gave an authoritative account of his encounters with Milosevic over 3 1/2 years of Balkan wars. He avoided arguments despite provocation from Milosevic, who suggested Clark left his NATO command early because of character problems and was taking campaign contributions from Albanian separatists in Kosovo for his Democratic presidential nomination bid. The strongest evidence came in Clark's recollection of a conversation with Milosevic in Belgrade one month after the Srebrenica massacre. Clark was part of a U.S. delegation negotiating a Bosnian peace plan and Milosevic, then president of Serbia, said he could speak on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs.

"I approached President Milosevic as he was standing there in a casual setting outside the formal meeting, and I was still wrestling with the idea as to how it is that Milosevic could maintain that he had the authority and the power to deliver the (Bosnian) Serb compliance with the agreement," Clark said. "I said, 'Mr. President, you say you have so much influence over the Bosnian Serbs, but how is it then, if you have such influence, that you allowed Gen. Mladic to kill all those people in Srebrenica?' "And Milosevic looked at me and he paused for a moment. He then said, 'Well, Gen. Clark,' he said, 'I warned Mladic not to do this, but he didn't listen to me."'

Clark insisted it had been clear that Milosevic "did know this in advance, and he was walking the fine line between saying he was powerful enough, influential enough to have known it, but trying to excuse from himself the responsibility for having done it." The testimony comes at a critical time for prosecutors who have just 15 days left to wind up their case and yield the floor for Milosevic to present his defense. The trial adjourned Wednesday and resumes Jan. 13 after a Christmas recess.

Judith Armatta of the Washington-based Coalition for International Justice said Clark's evidence was the hardest yet tying Milosevic to Srebrenica, but it fell short of proving his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. "It is important evidence, but it is quite a step away from what they need," Armatta said. "He is accused of genocide and complicity in genocide. That is very hard to prove. They need to show that Milosevic shared the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a specific group of people."

While judges could find Clark's comments incriminating, they could also work in favor of the defense. They could interpret the remark to mean Milosevic tried to prevent a slaughter of Muslim civilians, and had no power over the Bosnian Serbs who committed the murders. During cross-examination, Milosevic denied the conversation ever happened. "Gen. Clark, this is a blatant lie," Milosevic said. "First and foremost because we did not talk about Srebrenica at all, and secondly because I, throughout this time, through all of those years, I never issued a single order to Gen. Mladic, or was I in a position to issue him an order." Milosevic said to Clark, "I, for example, believe firmly until the present day that Gen. Mladic did not order any execution of people in Srebrenica. I believe that this was done by a group of mercenaries."

Rival militias battled over barren desert lands in central Somalia on Tuesday in fighting that killed at least 31 people and wounded 50 others, a spokesman for one of the militias said. The violence came as the U.N. Security Council called Tuesday for the creation of a monitoring group to investigate violations of the U.N. arms embargo against Somalia and make recommendations to strengthen it. The fighting between two subclans near Dhuusa Mareeb, 250 miles north of Mogadishu, began at 11 a.m. and lasted throughout the day, witnesses said. Witnesses said the fighters had nowhere to seek cover in the treeless desert, resulting in the high death toll.

Abdulaahi Mohamed Ali, a spokesman for one of the militia groups, said 12 fighters on his side were killed and 20 wounded. He said the other side suffered 19 deaths. Representatives for the other militia group could not immediately be contacted. Hospital workers in Dhuusa Mareeb said 50 wounded fighters had received treatment. The last confrontation between fighters from the Marehan and Dir subclans over land occurred in mid November and left nearly 100 people dead. Elders and chieftains from the two groups are still in peace negotiations, but after Tuesday's fighting both sides were remobilizing their militias. Hundreds of women and children have fled their homes in anticipation of more fighting, residents said.

A resolution adopted unanimously by the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday asks Secretary-General Kofi Annan to establish a four-member group to investigate arms smuggling to Somalia. It said offenders and their supporters could face "possible future measures by the council." The United Nations imposed an arms embargo against Somalia in 1992, a year after the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. The Horn of Africa nation has not had an effective government since then. The council authorized the new monitoring group, which will be based in Nairobi, to focus on transfers of ammunition, single use weapons and small arms. A report to the council last month by a previous panel of experts appointed by Annan said there was a continuous influx of small quantities of arms and ammunition into Somalia that feeds the local arms markets and provides weapons for the country's warlords. According to the report, weapons shipments tend to originate in - or are routed through - Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

A planned Mombasa retreat for Somali leaders has been postponed indefinitely. Foreign Affairs minister Kalonzo Musyoka yesterday called off the meeting, which was scheduled to start today. This is the third time the retreat has been cancelled. It was initially scheduled for November 20, but was put back to December 9 before being called off again. The conference was due to be launched by Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, who is also the chairman of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) Assembly of Heads of State and Government. Presidents Kibaki and Joachim Chissano of Mozambique were expected to attend.

About 40 leaders were to attend the 10-day retreat to speed up the reconciliation. Mr Musyoka said the leaders were expected to openly discuss their concerns to overcome any hurdles in the peace process. Mr Musyoka, who is also the chairman of the Igad ministerial committee on the peace process, said a new date would soon be communicated to the leaders. He was on a three-day visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which began on Tuesday. He met President Meles Zenawi with whom he exchanged notes regarding the Somali peace talks. The minister also met Sudanese President Omar Hassan el Bashir and discussed the possibility of a peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) by mid next-month. He also attended a conference on the forum on China-Africa cooperation in the Ethiopian capital.

A judge on Monday charged two suspected Basque separatists for allegedly plotting a string of Christmas Eve bombings, including one at a Madrid train station, news reports said. Gorka Loran, 25, and Garikoitz Arruarte, 24, refused to answer questions from National Court Judge Guillermo Ruiz Polanco who ordered them to be held in custody. They were charged with membership of an armed group, possession of weapons and attempted murder. No date was set for trial.

The two were arrested on Wednesday, Arruarte in the northern city of Burgos and Loran in the town of Hernani, near San Sebastian. On Christmas Eve, police uncovered a 44-pound (20-kilogram) bomb planted in a train heading from San Sebastian to Madrid. It was set to explode in the capital's bustling Chamartin station. Police evacuated the train in Burgos and removed the bomb. The two suspects were also allegedly planning to carry out near simultaneous bombings against railway lines in the northern provinces of Zaragoza and Teruel. ETA, which stands for Basque Homeland and Liberty in the Basque language, has killed more than 800 people since taking up arms in 1968 for Basque independence.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP)- A senior Japanese envoy met with a top Tamil Tiger rebel leader Monday to discuss pledges of aid - conditional on a continuing peace process - which are threatened due to a political deadlock, an official and a report said. Akio Suda, Japan's newly appointed ambassador to Colombo, met with S.P. Thamilselvan in the rebel-held northern town of Kilinochchi to discuss the ongoing political stalemate, which has stalled efforts to end Sri Lanka's 19-year war, a Tamil official said on condition of anonymity.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga wrested control of the defense, interior and information ministries from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Nov. 4, sparking a political crisis. The feud has frozen the island's fragile peace process and threatens to jeopardize some US$4.5 billion in international aid that was pledged on the condition of a continuing peace process. "The current political crisis in the South should not hinder the reconstruction (or) resettlement activities in the northeast," the LTT (Tamil Tigers) peace secretariat web site quoted Thamilselvan as telling Suda.

Japan - Sri Lanka's biggest aid donor - has taken a hands-on approach to the island's peace efforts. It hosted an international aid conference in June and has pledged US$1 billion aid. The rebels launched a violent campaign in 1983 for a separate state for the country's minority Tamils, claiming discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese. The conflict has killed 65,000 people. The fighting stopped after the two sides signed a Norwegian-brokered cease-fire in February 2002. But peace talks stalled in April this year and the Tamil Tiger rebels have refuse to resume them until the current dispute is resolve

Sri Lanka says international donors shouldn't lose patience with stalled peace process

Sri Lanka's foreign minister on Sunday urged international donors that have pledged US$4.5 billion in foreign aid not to lose patience over the South Asian nation's stalled efforts to end two decades of civil war. A political standoff between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has frozen the island's peace process, threatening to jeopardize international aid that was pledged on the condition of continuing peace efforts with Tamil rebels.

Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando said foreign donors should not be concerned that the two leaders failed to meet a Dec. 15 deadline to decide who should control the vital defense ministry. "These conflicts must be resolved without benchmarks and deadlines," Fernando told reporters during a stopover in Malaysia while traveling home from Mauritius. "I think the international community will be generous enough to give us a little more time."

Japan, which hosted a conference in June where 70 countries and organizations pledged reconstruction aid to Sri Lanka, has warned that the world's attention could fade if peace talks don't resume quickly enough. Fernando said Sri Lanka remained committed to forging a lasting peace with Tamil Tiger rebels as soon as possible, stressing that his government realizes other conflict-scarred countries also need international help. "We are not the only girl on the beach," Fernando said. "Sri Lanka has to get its act together. (Otherwise) Japan will go after other girls, and certainly the international community has enough on its hands."

Sri Lanka's peace process was thrown into uncertainty after Kumaratunga last month wrested control of the defense, interior and information ministries from Wickremesinghe, who says he can't continue peace efforts without command of the defense portfolio. Tamil Tiger rebels have refused to resume peace talks until the dispute is resolved. The rebels began fighting in 1983 to carve out a separate homeland for the country's minority ethnic Tamils, claiming discrimination by the Sinhalese majority. About 65,000 people were killed before a Norwegian-brokered truce in February 2002. But the rebels suspended talks in April this year, accusing the government of doing too little to help thousands of Tamil refugees.

The Sudanese government and rebels moved a step closer to ending Sudan's 20-year civil war after agreeing on how to divide the country's oil revenue - an issue that had been a key stumbling block at peace talks, the chief mediator said Sunday. Lazaro Sumbeiywo told The Associated Press the two sides have agreed in principle on how to share the oil revenue and were working to reach a full agreement on wealth sharing. "It's a major breakthrough. It was one of the contentious issues holding back the talks," Sumbeiywo said.

Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir was quoted by a Sudanese newspaper as saying that the parties had agreed to a 50-50 split of the oil. The independent Al-Sahafa daily quoted el-Bashir on Sunday as saying his government would provide such a high percentage of the country's oil revenues to forego the provision of any other federal assistance to southern Sudanese areas. "Fifty percent for the federal government and 50 percent to the government of the southern states, including 2 percent to go to the state where the oil is discovered," he was quoted as saying.

In July 2002, shortly after the peace process began, the parties agreed to a six-year transition period during which the south will have a regional administration. Most of Sudan's oil reserves are in the south. Africa's largest country joined the ranks of oil exporters in 1999 and is currently producing some 250,000 barrels per day. Yasir Arman, spokesman for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, or SPLA, said a joint committee was working to finalize a comprehensive wealth sharing agreement "anytime now." "We have resolved some difficult points on wealth sharing," Arman said. "We have made a real breakthrough."

Neither Arman nor Sumbeiywo would provide further details, but a source close to the talks said while the oil revenue agreement was a breakthrough, other issues including the sharing of non-oil revenues and what monetary system is adopted during the transition still have to be resolved. The struggle for resources has been one of the main issues in Africa's longest-running conflict, in which more than 2 million people have perished, mainly through war-induced famine. When Sudan began pumping oil, the rebels and international human rights groups accused the Sudanese government of forcing tens of thousands of southern villagers to flee the oil region.

Amin Hassan Omar, a member of the government delegation, told Sudan's official news agency that a deal could be reached on wealth sharing by the time the latest session of talks ends. "If the negotiations continue on the right track then there is a possibility of reaching a memorandum of understanding on the sharing of wealth by the end of this round of negotiations," Omar was quoted as saying. It is not clear when this session of talks, which is being held in the Kenyan town of Naivasha, 100 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of Nairobi, will end.

The negotiations had been expected to adjourn Friday for Christmas, but continued after the parties failed to reach any agreement on the outstanding issues, which also include the SPLA's representation in a transitional government, National Assembly and civil service, and the administration of three disputed areas in central Sudan. Sumbeiywo said Friday that he wanted the negotiations to continue until the parties reached a comprehensive peace deal. In October, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell met Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha and SPLA leader John Garang in Naivasha, and called on the sides to reach a comprehensive agreement by the end of the year. Powell called the parties on Friday to encourage them to move forward, the State Department said.

The war erupted in 1983 when southern rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim north. The rebels say they are fighting for greater equality for the south and for southerners to have the right to choose whether to remain part of Sudan. Under the July 2002 accord, the government accepted the right of southerners to self-determination through a referendum after the six year transition. The rebels in turn accepted the maintenance of Islamic law in the north.