AP - December 30th, 2005

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- Ireland's president during World War II offered condolences to Nazi Germany over the 1945 death of Adolf Hitler, newly declassified government records show.

Historians had believed that Ireland's prime minister at the time, Eamon de Valera, was the only government leader to convey official condolences to Eduard Hempel, director of the German diplomatic corps in Ireland. De Valera's gesture -- unique among leaders of neutral nations in the final weeks of World War II -- was criticized worldwide.

The presidential protocol record for 1938-1957, made public this week within a trove of previously secret government documents, shed new light on one of the most embarrassing chapters in the history of independent Ireland -- its decision to maintain cordial relations with the Nazis even after news of the Holocaust emerged.

The new document confirmed that President Douglas Hyde visited Hempel on May 3, 1945, a day after Ireland received reports of Hitler's death.

The newly released document says Hyde -- who died in 1949 -- says the president did not send an official letter of condolence to German government headquarters because ''the capital of Germany, Berlin, was under siege and no successor had been appointed.''

The Republic of Ireland, then called Eire, remained neutral throughout World War II.

Tens of thousands of Irishmen volunteered to serve in British military units, but many others rooted for Germany against their old imperial master Britain. The outlawed Irish Republican Army built contacts with the Nazis in an ultimately fruitless effort to receive weapons and money for insurrection in neighboring Northern Ireland, a British territory.

De Valera's government brutally suppressed the IRA but also rebuffed requests to allow Jews fleeing Nazi persecution to receive asylum in Ireland. De Valera also refused to allow Britain or the United States to use strategic Irish ports for protecting Atlantic convoys from attacks by German U-boat submarines, a policy that cost thousands of Allied seamen's lives.

In his May 1945 victory speech, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemned de Valera's neutrality. Churchill said Britain had considered laying ''a violent hand'' on neutral Ireland to seize its ports, but avoided this thanks to the crucial support of Northern Ireland, which remained part of the United Kingdom when the island was partitioned in 1921.

But de Valera argued that to refuse condolences ''would have been an act of unpardonable discourtesy to the German nation and to Dr. Hempel himself. During the whole of the war, Dr. Hempel's conduct was irreproachable. ... I certainly was not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat.''

Editor's commentary: We just wonder if Ireland offered similar condolences to Romania after Ceausescu was executed and do they plan to offer condolences to Iraq after Saddam hits the rope.

KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan former intelligence chief went on trial on Monday accused of war crimes and torture during communist rule in the 1980s, the first such trial to be held in Afghanistan after decades of warfare.

Assadullah Sarwari has been detained since 1992, when Mujahideen (holy warrior) factions overthrew a Soviet-backed communist regime.

Prosecutors said Sarwari was arrested for conspiring against Afghanistan's Islamic government and was guilty of illegal mass arrests and executions.

Now 64 and sporting a short grey and black beard, he served as head of intelligence when thousands of people were killed for opposing the government.

Appearing before the national security court, Sarwari said his detention was illegal and he had no connection with war crimes.

``I ... strongly reject the charges ... (and) consider them a political conspiracy,'' he told the court.

Sarwari was given 20 days to prepare an affidavit.

Officials said he would be sentenced to death if found guilty.

After heading the intelligence network, he served as deputy prime minister and Afghanistan's ambassador to Yemen.

His trial was the first for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan where successive regimes have been accused of abuses in 25 years of war that began with a Soviet invasion in 1979.

WAR CRIMES

The trial is taking place a week after President Hamid Karzai's government adopted a plan to address war crimes and other human rights abuses committed during the conflict.

It commits the government and the international community to the setting up a five-member task force by the end of the year to draw up a plan to deal with the abuses.

The task force, to comprise nominees from Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission and the United Nations and three from Karzai, will have until the end of the 2007 to present its proposal.

Rights groups have welcomed the fact that the action plan ruled out amnesties for serious abuses -- a response to concerns that perpetrators in Karzai's government and a new parliament inaugurated this month might try to block prosecutions.

In October, a Dutch court jailed two former police officers of Afghanistan's former communist regime for 12 and nine years after convicting them of war crimes and torture while serving with intelligence services.

The two were Hesamuddin Hesam, the former head of the Khad secret police between 1983 and 1991, and its head of interrogation, Habibullah Jalalzoy.

Dutch prosecutors estimated 200,000 political opponents were tortured by various branches of the Afghan security apparatus under communist rule and about 50,000 died.

There has been a broad international welcome for a legal decision in Libya to retry six foreign medics convicted of deliberately giving children HIV.

Libya's supreme court overturned death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.

They have always denied intentionally infecting 426 children with contaminated blood.

Bulgaria's president said the ruling "confirmed our hope that justice in this case will prevail".

"The unfair death sentences were reversed.... We hope that the swiftness and the effectiveness demonstrated by the Libyan court in the past days will help to solve the case as soon as possible," President Georgi Parvanov added.

US State Department spokesman Justin Higgins described the decision as "a positive development since it removes the risk of the death penalty being carried out".

"As we have made clear before, we believe a way should be found to allow the medics to return to their home," he said.

The Council of Europe welcomed the decision and said it hoped the new trial will "comply with the internationally recognised standards of fairness and due process".

Full story here.

Deposed Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena have been shot by a firing squad after a secret military tribunal found them both guilty of crimes against the state.

They were charged and convicted of genocide and undermining the national economy among a series of other offences, officials said.

News of their death was announced to the people of Romania on national television amid reports the couple had been found smuggling large amounts of money out of the country.

A stunned reaction from the public gave way to scenes of delight and a public outpouring on the streets to celebrate.

Full story here. Photo story here.

A court in The Hague has ruled that the killing of thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s was an act of genocide.

The ruling came in the case of Dutch trader Frans van Anraat, who was given a 15-year sentence for selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein's regime.

He was found guilty of complicity in war crimes over a 1988 chemical attack that killed more than 5,000 people, but acquitted of genocide charges.

The Dutch court said it considered "legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets requirement under Genocide Conventions as an ethnic group".

"The court has no other conclusion than that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq," the ruling said.

Full story here.

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) -- Zoran Katic will never trust the Serbian police with finding anyone. The 53-year-old auto mechanic from the city of Cacak was declared missing while being held for a week over an unpaid 2003 traffic violation, the Beta news agency reported.

Katic told the agency that he was arrested on Dec. 14 while at the local police station to report a change in his address.

When the police found he had an unpaid traffic fine, he was detained, and didn't have a chance to call his family.

Katic's sister, Ruzica Andrevska reported her brother missing 24 hours later, alerting the police and the local media, which aired Katic's picture along with an appeal by the family to help find him.

Andrevska claimed the police had told her they had no information about her brother. Katic managed to phone home four days later and was released shortly after, she said.

The police had no immediate comment.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned all Western music from Iran's state radio and TV stations -- an eerie reminder of the 1979 Islamic revolution when popular music was outlawed as ''un-Islamic'' under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Today, though, the sounds of hip-hop can be heard blaring from car radios in Tehran's streets, and Eric Clapton's ''Rush'' and the Eagles' ''Hotel California'' regularly accompany Iranian broadcasts.

No more -- the official IRAN Persian daily reported Monday that Ahmadinejad, as head of the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling by the council to ban all Western music, including classical music, on state broadcast outlets.

''Blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required,'' according to a statement on the council's official Web site.

Iranian guitarist Babak Riahipour lamented what he called a ''terrible'' decision. ''The decision shows a lack of knowledge and experience,'' he said.

Music was outlawed by Khomeini soon after the 1979 revolution. Many musicians went abroad and built an Iranian music industry in Los Angeles.

But as revolutionary fervor started to fade, some light classical music was allowed on Iranian radio and television; some public concerts reappeared in the late 1980s.

In the 1990s, particularly during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami starting in 1997, authorities began relaxing restrictions further. These days in Iran, Western music, films and clothing are widely available in Iran. Bootleg videos and DVDs of films banned by the state are widely available on the black market.

Ahmadinejad's order means the state broadcasting authority must execute the decree and prepare a report on its implementation within six months, according to the IRAN Persian daily.

Earlier this month, Ali Rahbari, conductor of Tehran's symphony orchestra, resigned and left Iran to protest the treatment of the music industry in Iran.

Before leaving, he played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to packed Tehran theater houses over several nights last month -- its first performance in Tehran since the 1979 revolution. The performances angered many conservatives and prompted newspaper columns accusing Rahbari of promoting Western values.

The ban applies to state-run radio and TV. But Iranians with satellite dishes can get broadcasts originating outside the country.

Ahmadinejad won office in August on a platform of reverting to ultraconservative principles, following the eight years of reformist-led rule under Khatami.

During his presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad also promised to confront what he called the Western cultural invasion of Iran and promote Islamic values.

Since then, Ahmadinejad has jettisoned Iran's moderation in foreign policy and pursued a purge in the government, replacing pragmatic veterans with former military commanders and inexperienced religious hard-liners.

He also has issued stinging criticisms of Israel, calling for the Jewish state to be ''wiped off the map'' and describing the Nazi Holocaust as a ''myth.''

International concerns are high over Iran's nuclear program, with the United States accusing Tehran of pursuing an atomic weapons program. Iran denies the claims.

The latest media ban also includes censorship of content of films.

''Supervision of content from films, TV series and their voice-overs is emphasized in order to support spiritual cinema and to eliminate triteness and violence,'' the council said in a statement on its Web site.

The council has also issued a ban on foreign movies that promote ''arrogant powers,'' an apparent reference to the United States.

The probibitions mirror those imposed in neighboring Afghanistan during the Taliban regime, which imposed a strict version of Islamic law, including a ban on music and film. The Taliban was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in late 2001.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An Iranian of the Bahai faith has died in his jail cell of unknown causes, 10 years after being imprisoned by Tehran for abandoning Islam, the Bahai International Community said on Monday.

Zabihollah Mahrami, 59, had been sentenced to death by Iran's Revolutionary Court in January 1996, but the sentence was later commuted to life in prison following an international outcry.

``His death comes amidst ominous signs that a new wave of persecutions has begin'' in Iran, the group's UN office said in a statement. At least 59 Bahais have been arrested, detained or imprisoned so far this year, up sharply from the last several years, it said.

The Bahai faith, an offshoot of Islam, originated in Iran 150 years ago. It claims five million members in 191 countries world-wide, including thousands in Iran where it is officially considered ``a misleading and wayward sect.''

Mahrami died in his cell last Thursday in a government prison in Yazd, where he had been forced to perform arduous physical labor and was the regular target of death threats, said Bani Dugal, Bahia's principal representative to the United Nations. She did not say where her information came from.

``In this light there should be no doubt that the Iranian authorities bear manifest responsibility for the death of this innocent man, whose only crime was his belief in the Bahai faith,'' Dugal said.

Mahrami was a civil servant who, like many other Bahais, lost his job following Iran's 1979 revolution. More than 200 Iranian Bahais have been killed and hundreds more imprisoned since 1978, the group said.

He was earning a living installing Venetian blinds when arrested in 1995 on charges of ``apostasy,'' a term used in Iran to denote abandoning Islam.

He was sentenced to death in January 1996, triggering protests from the European Parliament and numerous governments including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Britain and the United States.

Iranian officials later said he had been sentenced to death for spying for Israel rather than following the Bahai faith. His death sentence was in any case quietly dropped in 1999.

Prosecutors in Chechnya have opened a criminal investigation after finding "catastrophic" levels of radioactivity at a chemical factory in the republic.

Investigators say the radiation - in one place reportedly 58,000 times the usual level - poses a danger to people in the region's capital, Grozny.

The plant has reportedly not been secured since Russia bombed it in 1999.

The radioactivity at one storage centre in the Grozny plant is half that recorded at Chernobyl, Rossiya state television said.

Full story here.

Rights watchdog Amnesty International has called for urgent action to combat domestic violence in Russia.

One woman is believed to be killed every hour in the country, according to a report published on Wednesday.

It criticises the Russian authorities, from police to prosecutors, and calls for all forms of violence against women to be criminalised.

Figures from the Moscow Helsinki Group said there were 9,000 deaths in 2003, but Amnesty says there are few reliable statistics available and the scale of the problem could be even higher.

The report features accounts of abuse by women such as a schoolteacher repeatedly beaten by her amateur boxer husband, a woman thrown out of her a third-floor flat by her partner and a lawyer whose husband would deliberately beat her on parts of the body not usually visible in public.

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: This is why Putin wants to ban all NGOs. He wants to impose Stalin's terror on Russians once again and these groups are big obstacle. Russia will become terror paradise once again where you can beat up, rape, torture and even kill women without any consequences.

Belarusian lawmakers on Wednesday passed legislation that would crack down on Internet dating and online spouse searches in the latest of a series of stringent government controls backed by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Authorities said the measure, which was passed 101-1 by the subservient lower house of parliament, was intended to help halt human trafficking in the ex-Soviet nation.

The legislation would place new restrictions on organizations that promote dating or that help match potential suitors with spouses, particularly via the Internet.

The bill also would require Belarusian students seeking to study abroad to receive written permission from the Ministry of Education, if the study is longer than 30 days. Foreign companies seeking to hire Belarusian students for summer jobs also would need ministry approval.

Full story here.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Cut off from the outside world, Myanmar's most famous citizen spends her days reading, listening to the radio and meditating. The only visitor allowed into her rundown, two-story villa is a doctor. Her political party has been decimated by arrests and harassment.

People in this, one of Asia's most isolated countries, are scared to whisper the name of Aung San Suu Kyi. Just to drive near the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's heavily guarded house is to court arrest.

The petite, pro-democracy leader who used to appear before adoring crowds in her trademark yellow sarong and jasmine flower in her hair hasn't been seen in public for more than 2 1/2 years. At 60, she remains the face of an international campaign to oust the regime through economic sanctions and political pressure. But with her house arrest just extended for another six months and a brutal regime firmly in control, the opposition in this impoverished Buddhist country acknowledge democracy is years away.

Members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy continue to call for her release and that of thousands of other prisoners. But her arrest has paralyzed the organization and no fresh voices have emerged to challenge the authorities.

Win Naingbut, a vocal critic of the regime, says Suu Kyi's people ''have accepted as fact that there is nothing they can do to change the country.''

''They don't have any answers to the guns,'' he says.

The fate of the widowed mother of two reflects the declining state of the nation, where skyrocketing fuel prices, a plunging currency and rising debt have further impoverished many families this year.

The sacking last year of Prime Minister Gen. Khin Nyunt and the dismantling of his military intelligence unit have fostered an unpredictable political climate. Opponents seem a little more emboldened to speak out, people listen to the Voice of America and surf the Internet sites of exiled groups, and newspapers occasionally air touchy issues. But political debate is banned, and the leadership appears increasingly xenophobic, uncompromising and out of touch.

The regime has acted impervious to outside criticism ever since it seized power to abort Suu Kyi's landslide election victory in 1990. But it has turned its back on the international community even more firmly since Gen. Than Shwe, a career military man in his 70s, ousted the pragmatic Khin Nyunt.

Myanmar had been in line for a prestige boost next year -- the rotating chairmanship of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations. But in July, after the United States and European Union threatened to boycott ASEAN unless the regime compromised over Suu Kyi, Myanmar announced it would forgo the chairmanship.

If it has won any appreciation abroad, it is for having reduced the land cultivated for opium by 80 percent over the past nine years. But Myanmar is still a major source of amphetamines and the world's largest producer of illicit opium after Afghanistan. Some border regions are largely controlled by ethnic armies that have ended long-standing rebellions against the government but have kept their arms and narcotics turf.

The cash-strapped government, meanwhile, has embarked on a massive building spree, constructing hundreds of dams, bridges and roads. In November it abruptly announced it was moving the capital from Yangon, the former Rangoon, to a remote outpost 250 miles away in Pyinmana.

The reasons are unclear. Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had heard reports the junta was afraid of a U.S. invasion, and that the timing of the move was chosen by astrology. They said they were given a fax number for further inquiries about the new capital, but it didn't work.

''The Burmese are retreating from the outside world,'' said Josef Silverstein, a longtime U.S. scholar of Myanmar affairs. ''They are isolating themselves in a bunker mentality.''

Myanmar, called Burma until the junta renamed it, was once one of Asia's richest nations, but it was a secretive place on the economic downslide even before the generals took over.

Today on the crowded streets of Yangon, there is little evidence of dictatorship. Sugar cane vendors compete for space with hawkers of fake Rolex watches. Monks in red robes seek donations and fortunetellers do brisk business, advertising their services with signs featuring a big yellow hand.

The skyline is a mishmash of neglect and promise, with faded apartment buildings alongside flashy billboards advertising designer handbags. The streets are clogged with 1970s Japanese cars and occasional green World-War-II-era buses. The one train line, more popular as gas prices have risen nine-fold, weaves through the city with hundreds of passengers hanging from doors and windows.

Signs of grinding poverty emerge as the train heads into villages of thatched-roof huts, muddy lanes and hollow-eyed children.

In a village 20 miles outside Yangon, hundreds of children were gobbling up bowls of rice porridge distributed free by a store owner. In the next village, people complained about having no jobs and no money for school fees.

''We're living hand to mouth here,'' said a vegetable seller, refusing to give her name for fear of retaliation. ''Prices are up so there is less profit, more struggle.''

The United Nations says the dire situation is compounded by some of the highest rates of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV in Southeast Asia. Top government officials do not seem to recognize how ''precarious life is for the average citizen,'' says Charles Petrie, the U.N. Resident Coordinator in Myanmar.

''I don't think there is a humanitarian crisis today but there are a number of humanitarian emergencies,'' Petrie said. ''It's moving to a crisis because people are having a harder and harder time surviving.''

The aging military leaders paint a rosier picture. Using the New Light of Myanmar, a state-run daily, they present a world where growth will be 12.5 percent in 2005 -- not the 4.5 percent estimated by the International Monetary Fund -- and rural living standards are improving dramatically.

Democracy is coming, they say, pointing to their constitution-writing convention which resumed this month. Western critics call it a sham. The dictatorship says it will lead to elections but refuses to set a timetable.

''External and internal elements are trying to derail the national convention process at a time when it is going smoothly and successfully,'' Lt. Gen. Thein Sein, the chairman of the national convention convening committee, warned the 1,074 delegates. ''Be aware of subversives.''

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Schools closed and television stations aired long tributes Tuesday to the slain editor of Lebanon's leading newspaper, the fourth anti-Syrian figure assassinated this year. Gibran Tueni, 48, the general manager and chief columnist of the An-Nahar newspaper, died Monday morning when a car bomb struck his motorcade in Beirut's suburb of Mkalles.

A previously unknown group claimed responsibility for the bombing, which killed two other people and wounded 30. But Tueni's colleagues and political allies accused Syria, which denied involvement.

''Gibran Tueni is not dead. An-Nahar will continue,'' said the banner headline of Tuesday's An-Nahar. The front page carried a large picture of Tueni addressing a crowd at a massive anti-Syrian protest in March.

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora asked the United Nations for help investigating Tueni's assassination, calling Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday with a formal request for assistance, the official National News Agency reported. Tueni was killed hours before U.N. investigators delivered their latest report on the blast that killed former Premier Rafik Hariri in February. The report said investigators have new evidence to support suspicions that Lebanese and Syrian intelligence agencies were involved in Hariri's death.

Saniora also told Annan that Lebanon wanted an international tribunal in the Hariri case, the news agency said.

Tueni, a fierce critic of Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs, was one of hundreds of witnesses who gave evidence to the U.N. investigating commission.

President Bush condemned his slaying as a murder ''aimed at subjugating Lebanon to Syrian domination and silencing the Lebanese press.''

Across Lebanon on Tuesday, schools and universities did not open and some shops and businesses were closed as a mark of respect. Many FM radio stations played classical music or national songs. Local TV stations devoted their programs to Tueni's assassination and ran live coverage of a Greek Orthodox church in Beirut where people were paying their condolences.

A coalition of anti-Syrian groups called for a one-day general strike and ''the broadest possible popular participation'' at Tueni's funeral Wednesday. The coalition included Druse leader Walid Jumblatt, Hariri's son, Saad, and former Christian warlord Samir Geagea.

''We are in a real state of war,'' Geagea said on LBC television. ''They are waging war to prevent Lebanon from rising.''

Elected to parliament earlier this year, Tueni represented the Ashrafieh district of Beirut.

''No tears, Gibran is not dead, An-Nahar will continue,'' said Tueni's father, Ghassan, 79, as he shook hands with a line of weeping employees at the newspaper's offices.

An-Nahar's editorial said the paper's emblem, a rooster, ''will continue to crow loudly, to wake the sleeping.''

Rival papers dedicated full pages to Tueni, publishing large pictures of him and his devastated motorcade on their front pages.

''Journalism in Lebanon bleeds with An-Nahar: Gibran Tueni a martyr!'' said the banner headline of As-Safir newspaper.

Al-Mustaqbal, the paper owned by the family of the late Hariri, had no doubt as to who was responsible. Its headline: ''Syrian security regime assassinates Gibran Tueni.''

Syria has denied any role in killing Hariri, and has tried to discredit the commission investigating his death.

Hariri's assassination provoked mass demonstrations against Syria which, combined with international pressure, forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon at the end of April, ending a 29-year presence in its western neighbor.

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - A Venezuelan labor leader who helped organize a strike against President Hugo Chavez three years ago was sentenced on Tuesday to more than 15 years in prison for civil rebellion.

Carlos Ortega, one of Chavez's fiercest opponents during months of political turmoil, is the first top opposition leader jailed for the two-month-long strike that failed to topple the president.

Hundreds of business and political figures are under investigation for supporting the failed 2002 coup against Chavez that preceded it.

The government says opposition leaders who supported the coup and the strike must face rebellion charges for wrecking the economy and sabotaging the country's oil industry in an effort to oust Chavez.

Opponents of Chavez say the former soldier is cracking down on political foes as he drives Venezuela closer to the authoritarian model of his ally Cuban leader Fidel Castro through control of the courts and other key institutions.

``From prison, I'll keep working, I'll keep fighting to preserve the freedom, democracy and unity of the people,'' Ortega told Globovision news station by telephone. ``I'm no conspirator or coup plotter and I didn't betray my country.''

Ortega was captured in March in a Caracas nightclub after he returned to Venezuela from asylum in Costa Rica.

His attorney said the trial violated due process and that Ortega planned to appeal. Ortega was sentenced to 15 years and 11 months for civil rebellion and instigation charges.

Ortega, a gray-haired labor union firebrand, fled Venezuela in 2003 saying he feared for his life after officials ordered his arrest on rebellion and treason charges for helping spearhead the December 2002 to January 2003 strike.

The shutdown battered Venezuela's oil-reliant economy after managers and technicians at state petroleum company PDVSA joined the campaign to oust Chavez, who was elected in 1998 promising to fight poverty and corruption.

Ortega became a familiar sight at the end of 2002 as he appeared on television nightly to urge Venezuelans to join the strike.

The failed strike allowed Chavez to consolidate his control over the energy sector in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. A year later he won a recall referendum on his presidency and consolidated his self-described socialist revolution.

Editor's commentary: We wonder how much time in prison should his good drug dealer friend and terrorist in Bolivia get for all the chaos he caused there. Thanks to international Moscow lobby he is pushed to become next president of Bolivia. So much about double standards not to mention that Chavez himself attempted coup in Venezuela.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has been sharply criticised for taking a top job in a Russian-led consortium building a gas pipeline.

Mr Schroeder - who as chancellor negotiated the deal - will head the shareholders' committee, a position roughly comparable to board chairman.

The $5bn (£2.7bn) deal was struck between the two countries' leaders last September, just before Mr Schroeder lost power.

But the opposition Greens and Liberals (FDP) condemned Mr Schroeder's acceptance of the post, saying it would lead to the suspicion that the former chancellor was unable to distinguish between public and private affairs.

"It stinks," said Greens co-chairman Reinhard Buetikofer.

"It is to be hoped that Schroeder would do the job without payment. Otherwise there would be the suspicion that Russian President Putin created a job to reward Schroeder," the FDP's Rainer Bruederle told the International Herald Tribune.

Full story here.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - An Ethiopian court has sentenced to death one of Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam's top soldiers for genocide and abetting the murder of 971 people during the country's 1970s ``Red Terror'' campaign.

The Federal High Court handed down the death sentence on Thursday to Major Melaku Tefera, who had been administrator of the former Gondar province, Ethiopian state television reported.

Melaku, one of Mengistu's most feared aides known as ``The Butcher of Gondar,'' was convicted of genocide, abetting 971 murders and injuring 83 during the 1977-78 ``Red Terror'' campaign.

Mengistu launched the purge during which tens of thousands suspected of opposing his rule were rounded up, gunned down and their bodies thrown into the streets.

``Melaku was also found guilty of shattering with bullets the heads of people accused of revolutionary activities and for ordering that bodies be thrown in public places and on street sides for days, as reminders to others,'' state television reported the court as saying.

The court also found Melaku guilty of denying those killed a decent burial, instead ordering the bodies to be put in mass graves.

His conviction was part of an 11-year court case in which he and some 40 others, soldiers and officials during Mengistu's 17-year ``Dergue'' regime, have been on trial for genocide.

Mengistu, in exile in Zimbabwe, is among those charged and standing trial in absentia.

Melaku's death sentence is subject to approval by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who led the guerrilla campaign that overthrew Mengistu in 1991.

The charges against the former officials, who have spent up to 14 years in prison, include the killing of thousands including Emperor Haile Selassie, who was dethroned in 1974 by Mengistu.

Human rights groups have expressed alarm at the length of the trial, but prosecutors say the complex nature of the evidence made this necessary.

BEIJING (AP) -- Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting demonstrators and searched for the protest organizers, villagers said Friday.

Although security forces often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse demonstrators, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd -- as they did in putting down pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 near Tiananmen Square. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed.

During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, thousands of people gathered to protest the amount of money offered by the government as compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant.

Police started firing into the crowd and killed several people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. The death toll ranged from two to 10, they said, and many remained missing.

State media have not mentioned the incident and both provincial and local governments have repeatedly refused to comment. This is typical in China, where the ruling Communist Party controls the media and lower-level authorities are leery of releasing information without permission from the central government.

The number of protests in China's vast, poverty-stricken countryside has risen in recent months as anger comes to a head over land seizures, corruption and a yawning wealth gap that experts say now threatens social stability. The government says about 70,000 such conflicts occurred last year, although many more are believed to go unreported.

The clashes also have become increasingly violent, with injuries sustained on both sides and huge amounts of damage done to property as protesters vent their frustration in face of indifferent or bullying authorities.

All the villagers reached by The Associated Press said they were nervous and scared, and most did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. One man said the situation was still ''tumultuous.''

A 14-year-old girl said a local official visited the village Friday and called the shootings ''a misunderstanding.''

''He said he hoped it wouldn't become a big issue,'' the girl said by telephone. ''This is not a misunderstanding. I am afraid. I haven't been to school in days.''

She added: ''Come save us.''

Another villager said there were at least 10 deaths.

''The riot police are gathered outside our village. We've been surrounded,'' she said, sobbing. ''Most of the police are armed. We dare not go out of our home.''

''We are not allowed to buy food outside the village. They asked the nearby villagers not to sell us goods,'' the woman said. ''The government did not give us proper compensation for using our land to build the development zone and plants. Now they come and shoot us. I don't know what to say.''

One woman said an additional 20 people were wounded.

''They gathered because their land was taken away and they were not given compensation,'' she said. ''The police thought they wanted to make trouble and started shooting.''

She said there were several hundred police with guns in the roads outside the village Friday. ''I'm afraid of dying. People have already died.''

''These reports of protesters being shot dead are chilling,'' Catherine Baber, deputy Asia director at Amnesty International, said in a statement. ''The increasing number of such disputes over land use across rural China, and the use of force to resolve them, suggest an urgent need for the Chinese authorities to focus on developing effective channels for dispute resolution.''

Amnesty spokeswoman Saria Rees-Roberts said Friday in London that ''police shooting people dead is unusual in China and it does demand an independent investigation.''

Like many cities in China, Shanwei, the city where Dongzhou is located, has cleared suburban land once used for farming to build industrial zones. State media have said the Shanwei Red Bay industrial zone is slated to have three electricity-generating plants -- a coal-fired plant, a wave power plant and a wind farm.

Shanwei already has a large wind farm on an offshore island, with 25 turbines. Another 24 are set for construction.

Earlier reports said the building of the $743 million coal-fired power plant, a major government-invested project for the province, also was disrupted by a dispute over land compensation.

Authorities in Dongzhou were trying to find the leaders of Tuesday's demonstration, a villager said.

The man said the bodies of some of the shooting victims ''are just lying there.''

''Why did they shoot our villagers?'' he asked. ''They are crazy!''

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Southeast Asian nations on Friday demanded that military-ruled Myanmar speed democratic reforms and free the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, in the strongest display yet of their growing frustration with the junta.

Myanmar has pledged to allow democracy under strong pressure from its neighbors as well as the U.S. and other Western powers, but has so far failed to deliver.

Foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations made clear their exasperation with fellow member Myanmar at their annual Asian conference in Kuala Lumpur, said host Malaysia's Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar.

''I don't think any single country in ASEAN does not feel impatient and does not feel uncomfortable, because it does create problems and difficulties for us,'' Syed Hamid said.

Myanmar needs ''to be more responsive to the wishes of the international community,'' he said.

ASEAN members have become increasingly critical of Myanmar in public, despite the bloc's traditional policy of noninterference in each other's internal affairs.

Syed Hamid said that his Myanmar counterpart, Nyan Win, gave no indication when the junta would free Suu Kyi from more than two years of detention. Her house arrest was extended by six months last week.

He said Myanmar must ''create credibility'' with ''some tangible movement'' in the junta's self-proclaimed road map to democracy, which has achieved little in the last year. Thailand asked to see a ''rapid move'' toward democracy and Suu Kyi's release.

The junta reopened a convention on Monday to set guidelines for a new constitution in a process it says will eventually lead to elections. Critics are skeptical because the convention does not include Suu Kyi's party.

Myanmar's junta seized power in 1988. It called elections in 1990, but when Suu Kyi's party won a landslide, the military refused to hand over power.

South Korea signed a trade accord with the grouping, leaving out Thailand for now because of a rice dispute, but paving the way for a broader free trade deal with the region.

A hoped-for rapprochement at the summit between heavyweights China and Japan has been a nonstarter, with the Chinese foreign minister on Friday blaming Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a notorious war shrine for the sour ties.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday expressed doubt that the Holocaust occurred and suggested that Israel should be moved to Europe.

His comments, reported by the official IRNA news agency from a news conference he gave in the Saudia Arabian city of Mecca, follow his call in October for Israel to be ``wiped off the map'' which sparked widespread international condemnation.

``Some European countries insist on saying thatHitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail,'' IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

``Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: 'Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?'.''

``If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe -- like in Germany, Austria or other countries -- to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it,'' he added.

Editor's commentary: Arab desert is vast that there is no excuse to force Palestinians to struggle in Gaza for nothing. Why not give couple of Iranian provinces to Palestinians and allow them to settle there. Those who love someone are willing to share their accommodations with loved ones. Is Ahmadinejad love for Palestinians genuine? He can at least provide them with temporary accommodations until mighty Arab armies defeat Israel. It is not fair forcing poor people to commit suicide attacks while well armed armies sit still and do nothing. Rumor is that Arab states accept only wealthy and rich Palestinians while those poor are left to struggle indefinitely with Israel. Jihad seems to be "poor only" warfare not worthy of rich folks.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The United States refused Wednesday to withdraw financial sanctions on what it called North Korea's ''criminal regime,'' accusing the government of arms-dealing, drug sales, money-laundering and counterfeiting.

''It's up to North Korea to end the behavior that led to those sanctions,'' U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow told the National Press Club in Seoul. ''This is a criminal regime and we can't somehow remove our sanctions as a political gesture.''

His description of the North provoked strong criticism from a top South Korean official.

''It's not desirable to publicly characterize the other side,'' Son Min-soon, South Korea's chief negotiator at six-party talks over the North's nuclear ambitions, told The Associated Press in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ''If North Korea makes a similar characterization, would that be good?''

Vershbow's tough talk came one day after North Korea threatened to boycott the six-nation talks on eliminating its nuclear weapons programs unless Washington lifts sanctions imposed in October.

Officials in the South, which has been pursuing a detente of sorts with the North since the two countries' leaders held their first summit in 2000, have in recent years avoided strongly worded criticisms of the North.

The United States imposed sanctions targeting eight North Korean companies it said acted as fronts for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. North Korea vehemently denies the allegations.

The North engaged in the ''export of dangerous military technology, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, the counterfeiting of U.S. currency and many other illicit activities,'' Vershbow said.

Vershbow, who assumed his post in October, refused to characterize North Korean leader Kim Jong Il but said the state he runs is ''a very repressive regime'' that continues to possess ''concentration camps for political prisoners.''

Regarding the counterfeiting of other countries' money, Vershbow remarked that ''according to one observer, it's the first regime that's done that since Adolf Hitler.'' Vershbow didn't identify his source.

The North's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper made the threat to suspend participation in the six-party talks in a commentary carried Tuesday by the official Korean Central News Agency.

''It is impossible to resume the six-party talks under such provocative sanctions applied by the U.S.,'' the commentary said.

The talks, launched in 2003, involve China, the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia. Their fifth and latest session recessed in November with no signs of progress on persuading the North to disarm. The parties agreed at the end of the fifth session to meet again at an early, though unspecified, date.

North Korea says Washington agreed in the last round of talks in Beijing to hold negotiations on the sanctions. The U.S. denies such an offer.

The Rodong Sinmun commentary also called on the U.S. to respect the North and not take any actions that would impede the progress of nuclear talks. An earlier version called the sanctions a U.S. conspiracy to win concessions from the North on the nuclear issue.

''Our enforcement of U.S. law should not be used to hold up the six-party talks,'' Vershbow said Wednesday.

''North Korea has tremendous economic and social problems, none of which will be solved by the pursuit of nuclear weapons,'' he said.

The North and South, which fought the 1950-53 Korean War and remain technically in a state of conflict as a peace treaty was never concluded, are divided by a heavily armed border, the world's last Cold War frontier.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Waving a finger and pounding his desk, Saddam Hussein told the judges in his trial to ''go to hell'' and vowed not to return to court Wednesday.

The outburst came at the end of a daylong session Tuesday in which a woman, speaking behind a beige curtain and with her voice disguised, told of beatings, torture and sexual humiliation when she was a teenager at the hands of security agents.

The ousted Iraqi president sat stone-faced and silent while she spoke. But after hours of testimony from the woman and another two witnesses, he exploded with anger.

Saddam, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt and clutching a Quran, complained that he and the seven other defendants were tired and had been deprived of opportunities to shower, have a change of clothes, exercise or go for a smoke.

''This is terrorism,'' he declared.

Throughout the trial, which began Oct. 19, Saddam has repeatedly staged confrontations with the court and attempted to take control of the proceedings with dramatic rhetorical flourishes.

The defendants are charged in the deaths of more than 140 Shiite Muslims in retaliation for an assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail in 1982. Saddam accused Iran of ordering the attempt on his life.

Five witnesses -- two women and three men -- testified Tuesday in the fourth session of the trial, all of them hidden from the public view and with their voices disguised to protect their identities.

The most compelling testimony came from the woman identified only as ''Witness A,'' who was a 16-year-old girl at the time of the crackdown. Her voice breaking with emotion, she told the court of beatings and electric shocks by the former president's agents.

''I was forced to take off my clothes, and he raised my legs up and tied my hands. He continued administering electric shocks and whipping me and telling me to speak,'' Witness A said of Wadah al-Sheik, an Iraqi intelligence officer who died of cancer last month while in American custody.

The woman broke down several times as she struggled to maintain her composure. ''God is great. Oh, my Lord!'' she said, moaning.

Such treatment of a young woman is gravely offensive in traditional Arab culture, and Saddam was careful to avoid any insulting gesture in Tuesday's session, which was televised in Iraq. On Monday, he had angrily challenged male witnesses, insulting them and suggesting one needed psychiatric treatment.

''Witness A'' strongly suggested she had been raped, but did not say so outright. When Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin asked her about the ''assault,'' she said: ''I was beaten up and tortured by electrical shocks'' but repeated that she had been ordered to undress.

''They made me put my legs up. There were more than one of them, as if I were their banquet, maybe more than five people, all of them officers,'' she said.

''Is that what happens to the virtuous woman that Saddam speaks about?'' she wept, prompting the judge to advise her to stick to the facts.

She later quoted a security officer as telling her, ''You should thank your God because you are here in the Intelligence Center. If you were in the directorate of security, no woman would remain a virgin.''

Nevertheless, she also said security guards raped many fellow female detainees.

When asked by the judge which of the defendants she wanted to accuse, ''Witness A'' identified Saddam. ''When so many people are jailed and tortured, who makes such a decision?'' she said.

By the end of the day, Saddam was back to his combative style.

''I will not return,'' he shouted after the court decided to convene again Wednesday. ''I will not come to an unjust court! Go to Hell!''

Under Iraqi law, a court can force a defendant to attend a trial if he is not willing, said Iraqi lawyer Bassem al-Khalili.

But it was unclear whether the court would force the issue of Saddam's attendance. The court has shown considerable deference to the former president, tolerating frequent outbursts in violation of local rules of procedure.

Measures taken to preserve the witnesses' anonymity complicated the testimony. At first, defense attorneys complained they could not hear Witness A because of the voice distortion. The judge then ordered the voice modulator shut off.

However, the audience could not hear at all, so Amin ordered a recess, and the modulator was fixed, allowing all to hear.

Defense attorneys insisted on face-to-face questioning of Witness A and demanded that the defendants should also see her. So, after she gave her testimony for more than an hour, Amin ordered the session closed to the public, pulled screens in front of the press and visitors' gallery, and cut the sound.

During direct testimony, Witness A said she was held and tortured at a detention facility in Baghdad before being taken to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside the capital. Later her family was taken to a desert facility outside the southern city of Samawah.

At the Baghdad facility, she said she was thrown into a room with red walls and ceiling inside an intelligence department building and that prisoners were given only bread and water to eat.

''After all this torture that we went through, would anybody still have an appetite to eat?'' she said.

At Abu Ghraib, the guards stripped one of her male relatives, a deaf mute, and tied a rope to his genitals, pulling him into the cells where the women were kept, she said. Insects were everywhere -- in cells and on their clothes, she said, adding that inmates used prison blankets to make underwear and fashioned shoes out of cardboard and strings.

She said one woman gave birth in the prison. ''The baby got stuck between her legs. Another woman tried to help her, but the guards told her it was none of her business. The baby suffocated between her legs,'' she said. She said her sister and sister-in-law also gave birth while in detention.

''I was freed at the end when I was 20,'' she said. ''All my friends became doctors and teachers, and I am now just a housewife.''

Later, a second woman took the stand, identified as ''Witness B.'' She said she was 74 and recounted how her family was arrested in 1981 -- a year before the Dujail incident.

Until that point in her testimony, her voice was modulated. But again, the judge decided it wasn't working properly. The system was turned off and all of the electronic feeds from the court room cut, including to the press gallery, before the witness could explain the relevance of a 1981 arrest.

''Witness C,'' a man, testified that he was taken by security forces along with his parents and sister. They spent 19 days at the intelligence headquarters and 11 months in Abu Ghraib, where his father died after being beaten on the head, he said. Then they spent three years in the desert.

''At the intelligence headquarters, they put two clips in my ears,'' the witness said, adding he was told that if he lied, he would be given an electric shock. When he answered a question, the shock was administered, he said.

''In prison they used to bring men to the women's room and ask them to bark like dogs,'' he said. ''My father died in prison and I was not able to see him.'' He added that his father, who was 65 and had heart problems, was kept in a room about 50 yards from him.

''How come you remember all these things?'' Saddam asked.

''This was a great sadness to me,'' the witness replied, ''and I can't forget a sadness.''

The testimony prompted an outburst from Saddam, who complained of his own conditions in detention. He said the court had time to listen to the witnesses' complaints ''but does anyone ask Saddam Hussein whether he was tortured? Whether he was hit?''

He urged the judge to investigate his conditions because ''it is your duty as judges to investigate the crime at its scene.''

''I live in an iron cage covered by a tent under American democratic rule. You should come see my cage,'' he told Amin. ''The Americans and the Zionists want to execute Saddam Hussein.''

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Men and women were tortured for days and babies left to die in an interrogation facility which featured a meat grinder for human flesh, the first prosecution witness to face Saddam Hussein told the court on Monday.

After weeks of delay and legal arguments over security and the legitimacy of the court, the trial of Saddam and seven co- defendants on charges of crimes against humanity heard confusing but graphic witness evidence of torture and summary execution.

``I swear by God I walked by a room and on my left I saw a grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath,'' said 38-year-old Ahmed Hassan, who said he had been kept in room 63 at the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

Hassan, the first witness to face Saddam in court, said he was 15 when Saddam visited the village in July 1982 and Shi'ite militants tried to assassinate him.

Speaking technically as an individual plaintiff alongside the state, which is pressing charges of crimes against humanity, Hassan said he and his family were among hundreds of people rounded up in a security operation run by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti after an attempt on Saddam's life in the village.

Barzan, one of Saddam's three younger half-brothers and the former head of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, is one of Saddam's seven co-accused in the case relating to the killings of 148 mostly Shi'ite Muslim men from Dujail.

``Barzan was present. He had red cowboy boots and blue jeans and a sniper rifle,'' Hassan, a stockily built worker with a round face and a graying beard, told the heavily fortified court in central Baghdad.

He said Saddam, from the Sunni Arab minority, asked a 15-year-old boy if he knew who he was. ``He said 'Saddam'. Then Saddam hit him in the head with an ash tray,'' Hassan said.

Hassan risked reprisals by letting his face appear on television as he gave evidence.

Toward the end of his testimony he stood facing Saddam as the former president challenged his testimony. Hassan held Saddam's gaze as Saddam asked how he could possibly remember the names and birth dates of people he said were killed, responding that he had memorized them as they were read out by guards.

With Barzan constantly interjecting from the dock and calling the testimony lies, Hassan said he was among hundreds of people taken from the Shi'ite village to the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters, run by Barzan.

He said it was while he was climbing the stairs there that he saw the meat grinder. ``No one escaped torture,'' he said.

``They would put a mask on my eyes and because I was young it would fall down. I saw women being tortured,'' he said.

``My brother was given electric shocks while my 77-year-old father watched,'' Hassan said. ``They told us, 'why don't you confess, you will be executed anyway','' he said.

``One man was shot in the leg with two bullets... Some people were crippled because they had their arms and legs broken.''

He said they were held in Hakmiya for 70 days. While they were there a woman told a guard that her infant baby needed milk or he would die.

``He died and the guard threw him from the window,'' Hassan told the court. ``Pregnant women gave birth in the prison. Their babies died.''

Saddam and his co-defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the charges. They could be sentenced to death if found guilty.