AP - February 28th, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Prosecutors presented documents Tuesday they said show Saddam Hussein approved executions of more than 140 Shiites in the 1980s, the most direct evidence yet against the former Iraqi leader in his four-month trial. Among those sentenced to hang was an 11-year-old boy.

The most significant document featured a signature said to be Saddam's on a court list of people to be executed, though it was not clear he was aware of their ages. The list on that particular document only had names.

About 50 of those sentenced died during interrogation before they could go to the gallows. One man, his brother and two sons were executed by mistake, and Saddam allegedly ordered them declared ''martyrs'' to cover up the error.

When it was discovered that the 11-year-old and nine other juveniles were not executed but were still in prison years later, they were ordered killed and their bodies buried in secret -- an order approved with a signature the prosecution said was that of the intelligence agency chief at the time, Barzan Ibrahim, who is Saddam's half brother and a co-defendant in the trial.

Saddam, Ibrahim and six other members of the former regime are on trial for torture, imprisonment and the killings of some 148 Shiites in a crackdown launched after a 1982 attempt to assassinate the former Iraqi leader in the town of Dujail. They face death by hanging if convicted.

Tuesday's session was one of the most orderly since the trial began in October. The defense team gave up on a boycott of the tribunal it began last month and attended the session, though chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman rejected their demand that he and chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi step down.

Saddam and the other defendants entered the court and took their seats silently -- in sharp contrast with nearly every other session, which began with Saddam and Ibrahim shouting slogans or arguing with the judge.

Saddam and several other defendants have ended a hunger strike he and some co-defendants started Feb. 12, two days before the last trial session, defense lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi said Sunday.

After the two-hour session, Abdel-Rahman adjourned until Wednesday.

The defense team's participation appeared to vindicate the tough approach Abdel-Rahman has taken since taking over the tribunal in late January, replacing a chief judge who had been criticized for allowing Saddam's outbursts. In contrast, Abdel-Rahman has thrown out defendants for shouting and has pushed ahead with the proceedings even when the lawyers -- and, at times, the defendants themselves -- refused to attend.

One member of the defense team, Salih al-Armouti, dismissed the documents presented in court Tuesday.

''I am not casting doubt on them as much as I'm saying that I consider them to be void and useless. They cannot be proof of any action that puts legal responsibility on my client,'' he told Al-Arabiya television, though he would not elaborate.

In the first months of the trial, a series of Dujail residents testified that they were imprisoned and tortured following the assassination attempt and that their relatives were killed. Several women related how they were stripped naked, beaten or given electric shocks -- one testifying that Ibrahim himself kicked her in the chest as she hung upside down.

But none could directly implicate Saddam in the crackdown. In the past three sessions, prosecutors have been presenting documents aimed at showing the former Iraqi leader was directly involved.

On Tuesday, chief prosecutor al-Moussawi displayed a series of documents detailing the executions, though the numbers and chronology were often confusing.

One of the documents was a June 14, 1984 ruling by the Revolutionary Court sentencing to death 148 people from Dujail. A presidential decree issued two days later approved the death sentences, with a signature that prosecutors said was Saddam's.

The sentences were passed after an ''imaginary trial,'' al-Moussawi told the court.

''None of the defendants were brought to court. Their statements were never recorded,'' he said.

Prosecutors also displayed a March 1985 document listing the names and ordering the executions to be carried out, signed allegedly by Ibrahim. A March 23, 1985 Revolutionary Court document confirmed the executions took place that day.

As it turned out, not all 148 had gone to the gallows. It was discovered that two people on the list were released by mistake, and the Mukhabarat intelligence agency launched an investigation in 1987 to find out what happened.

According to a report by the investigation, those implementing the execution order in 1984 discovered that some of those on the list had already been ''liquidated during interrogations.'' The remaining 96 were executed as ordered.

But because of the ''shortness of time,'' officials did not read the names on the list carefully, and four detainees who were not on the list and previously had been ordered released were executed by mistake, according to the document. They were identified as a man named Mahdi Adel-Amir, two of his sons and his brother.

The report recommended that a Mukhabarat officer who accidentally failed to release the Abdel-Amirs be disciplined with a prison sentence. A handwritten note that the prosecution said was Saddam's signature approved the recommendation. A later document said he was sentenced to three years in prison.

The report also recommended that a decree be issued to declare the Abdel-Amirs ''martyrs'' and return to their families properties that were stripped from relatives of the Dujail suspects. A note by Saddam's secretary said Saddam approved that recommendation as well.

A later Mukhabarat document showed that 10 juveniles thought to have been among the 96 executed -- aged 11 to 17 at the time of sentencing -- had instead been sent to a desert prison outside the southern city of Samawah.

The memo recommended executing the 10 in secret. A handwritten note in the margin of the memo, signed with what the prosecution said was Ibrahim's signature, approved the secret execution and recommended that Mukhabarat agents bury the bodies ''so that the (Baghdad) municipality not find out.''

''If we can guarantee this is carried out properly, then there is no objection,'' the note said. They were executed in 1989, other documents showed.

RAIPUR, India (Reuters) - Maoist rebels set off a land mine under a truck on Tuesday in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, killing 55 people and wounding at least 20 who belonged to a government-backed anti-Maoist group, police said.

The attack came on the eve of a visit to the country by U.S. President George W. Bush and was one of the worst single acts of violence by Maoists in the past three decades.

Analysts said the attack showed New Delhi could ill-afford to take the growing Maoist threat lightly, saying that the rebels posed a bigger danger than Kashmiri Islamist militants.

``Maoists set off a land mine in Darmagura area in Dantewada district, killing 55 people,'' senior police officer S.K Paswan told Reuters, adding those killed were tribal members returning from an anti-Maoist meeting organized by the state.

Some of the wounded were taken to neighboring Andhra Pradesh state by helicopter.

Last year the local Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government set up and started funding local anti-Maoist groups in impoverished and underdeveloped areas and provided arms to some members to fight the guerillas.

Officials said hundreds of police reinforcements had been sent to the area to search for those behind the attacks.

Darmagura, 500 km (300 miles) south of the state capital Raipur, is a stronghold of Maoists who claim to be fighting for the rights of peasants and landless laborers.

Indian Maoists, who operate in at least nine of the country's 29 states, have stepped up attacks in the past year, killing dozens of people, including police. India's home ministry said there are about 9,300 Maoist guerillas operating in the country.

DANGER TO INDIA?

Security analysts say New Delhi ignores the seriousness of the Maoist threat in the country at its peril.

``This is a great error of judgment and the country will pay for this for decades,'' said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the New Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Management.

He said Maoists were already operating in 165 of the country's 602 administrative districts and expanding their influence.

Sahni criticized the federal government's dual policy of fighting the Maoists through the local police while developing impoverished districts where the guerillas derive their support, especially among poor tribals and lower castes.

``Development is not the answer for terrorism. You cannot outdevelop a terrorist movement,'' Sahni said, calling for a modern, well-equipped police force to tackle the rebels.

India's Home Ministry said last week Maoist violence has been rising, with 892 people killed in 2005, compared to 653 in 2004.

The Maoists, who often target those they consider government informers as well as landlords and local officials deemed to be corrupt, temporarily seized parts of a town in eastern Bihar state in November.

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spanish police arrested a suspected Serb hit man wanted in the murder of a Kosovo Albanian who was believed to have had evidence implicating former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in dozens of murders, authorities said Monday.

Police say the arrest of Veselin Vukotic, a master of disguise who confounded authorities in Europe and Latin America for 16 years, could reveal key evidence in the trial against Milosevic at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

Milosevic faces 66 counts of war crimes, including genocide, for his role in Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia during the bloody breakup of the six-nation Yugoslav federation in the 1990s.

''The detention of Vukotic could be an essential piece in the case against Milosevic,'' the police said, adding that the war crimes tribunal has ''shown great interest'' in his capture.

Vukotic was arrested over the weekend at Madrid's Barajas airport after arriving from Paris, a police statement said. He was allegedly carrying a high-quality counterfeit Croat passport and driver's license in the name of Ludvig Bulic. Police had been tipped off to his arrival and were waiting for him.

Police said Vukotic, 47, used various aliases to avoid capture and was constantly on the move between Europe and Latin America, usually staying at luxury hotels and maintaining an expensive lifestyle. It was not clear who financed him. He was believed to have been living under an assumed name most recently in Barcelona, with his wife and two daughters.

Spanish police said Vukotic and two other men killed Enver Hadri, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, in Brussels on Feb. 25, 1990.

Hadri was a human rights activist who had been advocating severing ties between Kosovo and Serbia since the late 1960s. He moved to Brussels around that time, and later started a political magazine which he used to call for the unification of Albanian speaking areas in a single state in the Balkans.

Hadri was part of a large ethnic Albanian diaspora in Europe who wanted to preserve territorial integrity of the old federation and were involved in a cat-and-mouse game with Yugoslav authorities.

The killers pulled up beside Hadri's car as he waited for a light to change, and shot him in the head using a gun with a silencer.

Spanish police said Hadri had been carrying documents which tied Milosevic to as many as 34 murders of prominent people, although the police gave no details and said they had no independent confirmation.

Reshat Sahitaj, an associate of Hadri's, told The Associated Press in Kosovo the documents were files on the killings of 23 ethnic Albanians allegedly killed by the Serb security service in late 1989 and early 1990 in Kosovo.

Sahitaj said the files -- including the victims' names and details of where they were killed -- were intended to back up a European Parliament resolution on the difficult situation in the province at the time.

In April 2003, a protected U.N. war crimes prosecution witness who said he had worked for Yugoslavia's secret service claimed in Milosevic's trial in The Hague that Vukotic once admitted to killing Hadri.

The witness, identified only as C048, said that both Milosevic and Vukotic attended a March 1993 meeting of Serbian leaders and police officials in the ''Casino Royal'' in Novi Sad north of Belgrade.

''Vukotic ''told me about the liquidation of Albanians around Europe,'' said the protected witness, who testified from behind tinted glass. ''He did it under the orders of the Yugoslav secret service. The last he mentioned was that he killed Hadri.''

After the testimony, Milosevic vehemently denied that he attended any such meeting.

A month after the Hadri killing, Vukotic allegedly murdered one of his accomplices in that crime during a fight at a Belgrade discotheque. Two other people were gravely wounded in the attack. The man believed to have been the third Hadri shooter, Darko Asanin, was killed in 1995.

In 1997, Vukotic allegedly killed another man, this time in a disco in Montenegro.

Vukotic, wanted in both Belgium and Serbia-Montenegro, was to be brought before Spain's National Court in Madrid.

An EU-funded radio station has begun broadcasting into Belarus to offer Belarussians "independent" news ahead of next month's election.

Lithuanian-based Baltic Waves will broadcast a daily hour-long bulletin of news, music and information on Europe.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko - called Europe's last dictator by the US - is accused of stifling the media.

A Polish-funded radio station, Radio Racja, began broadcasting into Belarus earlier this week.

Baltic Waves is being run by a team of Polish, Lithuanian, German, Russian and Belarussian journalists from Vilnius.

It is part of a wider two million euro ($2.4m) package of measures by the EU to support Belarussian journalists and promote an independent media in the country.

Weekly half-hour television programmes are due to be broadcast soon.

Full story here.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A Kabul court on Saturday found a communist-era intelligence chief guilty of ordering hundreds of killings a quarter-century ago and sentenced him to death by firing squad. Relatives of the dead cried out: ''God is Great!''

Asadullah Sarwari headed the government's feared intelligence department in 1978 after a Soviet-backed communist takeover, which was followed by a ruthless crackdown on its opponents. He later served as vice president.

''The government at the time was like a machine and I was just a part of the machine,'' Sarwari, 64, wearing glasses and sporting a graying beard, told the court.

The court heard testimony Saturday from more than 20 witnesses who claimed to have lost relatives, and saw video footage of documents, allegedly signed by Sarwari, in which he ordered killings.

Ghalam Sakhi Abasy, the state prosecutor, told The Associated Press that he had documented evidence of more than 400 killings ordered by Sarwari.

''According to the evidence, on video tape and written, and the participation of witnesses in an open court, I sentence you to death,'' Judge Abdul Basit Dakhatyari said.

He imposed the maximum sentence for the murders of ''hundreds of mujahedeen and innocent people.'' The mujahedeen fought against the communist-era regime.

The verdict was greeted with chanting and applause from people in court.

Sarwari was cleared on a second charge of conspiracy against a post-communist government of the early 1990s.

Afghanistan's human rights commission welcomed the first prosecution for crimes against humanity in the country as a move toward ending impunity, but the group's leader criticized the chaotic conduct of the trial as ''weak and lazy.''

Sarwari conducted his own defense. Sarwari's son Ahmad Khalid said his father would appeal.

Sarwari had spent 13 years in custody before the trial. He was arrested in 1992 when Islamic guerrillas gained control of Kabul after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. He was held by the Northern Alliance after the capital fell to the Taliban in 1996, and was returned to a Kabul jail cell following the late-2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban.

Ahmad Amin Mujadedi, one of the witnesses who testified against Sarwari, said he had been arrested in Kabul at age 15 with more than 40 other relatives because their family were religious leaders. He said the women and children, including himself, were released, but the men were assumed to have been killed.

''In our family we still have widows who are waiting for their husbands. We have mothers who are waiting for their sons,'' Mujadedi said. ''When I pass this news to them that Sarwari was sentenced to death, those widows and mothers will be very happy.''

The head of the Afghanistan rights commission, Ahmad Nader Nadery, said there was evidence of systematic torture, disappearances and extra-judicial killings by the intelligence apparatus Sarwari headed.

But Nadery said Afghanistan's fledgling legal system was not yet ready to try such cases and noted Sarwari had to conduct his own defense after his counsel resigned and no replacement could be found, and witnesses were not properly cross-examined at the four hearings.

''He is one of the notorious people in the history of Afghanistan, but it's a lost opportunity that his trial was conducted in a weak and lazy way,'' Nadery said.

Rights groups have called for a war crimes tribunal to bring justice for gross abuses in Afghanistan's bloody past -- including those committed by former mujahedeen leaders who were key players in the civil war and have become lawmakers and figures in the present government.

TURIN (Reuters) - Saku Koivu had a goal and an assist and Antero Niittymaki made 21 saves as Finland shutout Russia 4-0 in Olympic men's hockey on Friday, setting the stage for an unexpected all-Nordic gold medal final.

Finland, who have never won Olympic hockey gold, will face off against their bitter sporting rivals Sweden on Sunday in a golden showdown that is sure to ignite Nordic passions.

The Finns, who have allowed just five goals in seven games during an unbeaten run through the tournament, once again played air-tight defense, defusing Russia's explosive attack with tireless forechecking and spotless positional play.

The Russians were allowed few premium scoring chances and those they did manage Niittymaki was in position to make the stop.

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: Finnish cook came to Putin with four donuts to tell him that his plane is grounded. There will be no trip to Torino to watch Russia fighting for Olympic gold in hockey. Putin while gobbling donuts replies: "Don't worry about that, humiliation is my middle name". Why worry about it indeed when Russia won male competition in figure skating. Not everything is in roughness, sometimes feminine side is also important. Moscow mayor Luzhkov, a good friend and supporter of Putin, has different opinion. He banned gay pride parade this year in Moscow.

Update: Putin got three more donuts from Czechs on Saturday and no medals.

Partial transcript of encounter between London Mayor Ken Livingstone and newspaper reporter Oliver Finegold after city hall reception, as taped by the journalist:

Finegold: ''Mr. Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did it ...''

Livingstone: ''Oh, how awful for you.''

Finegold: ''How did tonight go?''

Livingstone: ''Have you thought of having treatment?''

Finegold: ''How did tonight go?''

Livingstone: ''Have you thought of having treatment?''

Finegold: ''Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?''

Livingstone: ''What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?''

Finegold: ''No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal.''

Livingstone: ''Ah, right.''

Finegold: ''I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?''

Livingstone: ''Well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it 'cause you're paid to, aren't you?''

Finegold: ''Great. I've got you on record for that. So how did tonight go?''

Livingstone: ''It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags.''

Finegold: ''How did tonight go?''

Livingstone: ''It's reactionary bigots ...''

Finegold: ''I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job.''

Livingstone: ''... and who supported fascism.''

Finegold: ''I'm only asking for a simple comment. I'm only asking for a comment.''

Livingstone: ''Well, work for a paper that isn't ...''

Finegold: ''I'm only asking for a comment.''

Livingstone: ''... that had a record of supporting fascism.''

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) -- Kazakh opposition leaders Thursday demanded that the speaker of parliament's upper house resign after a senior Senate official was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the slaying of an opposition leader.

The opposition has said the Feb. 11 killing of Altynbek Sarsenbayev, a leader of the Nagyz Ak Zhol party, was a politically motivated hit. Sarsenbayev, 43, was kidnapped along with his bodyguard and driver, and all three were shot dead in the mountains near the commercial capital, Almaty.

The head of the Senate administration, Erzhan Utembayev, who is a former deputy prime minister, was arrested Wednesday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Thursday.

Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, leader of the For a Fair Kazakhstan opposition alliance, said Utembayev's arrest ''confirmed that the traces of this political order go to the highest offices.''

The opposition alleged in a statement that Utembayev was too weak a figure to have masterminded Sarsenbayev's murder and demanded the immediate resignation of Senate speaker Nurtai Abykayev.

''We believe Abykayev must immediately step down because he has enough formal and informal resources to influence the investigation,'' another opposition leader, Oraz Zhandosov, said.

Abykayev previously headed the National Security Committee and President Nursultan Nazarbayev's administration.

Police have arrested five security service officers, and two more men, one said to be a driver and another unidentified, as suspects in the murder.

On Wednesday, the opposition demanded that the president's daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, and her husband, Rakhat Aliyev -- who is also the deputy foreign minister -- be questioned in connection with the killing.

The opposition Aina weekly Thursday published an interview with a retired security officer who, citing sources close to the investigation, alleged that the murder had been instigated by Aliyev, who is also a former senior security official.

The Svoboda Slova newspaper carried an open letter to Aliyev and Dariga Nazarbayeva, a lawmaker and media mogul, that charged the couple had ''personal motives to dislike'' Sarsenbayev.

Aliyev could not be reached for comment on the allegations.

Dariga Nazarbayeva on Thursday accused unnamed ''very influential forces'' of being behind the murder, calling it ''a carefully planned action aimed to discredit'' the president.

''These forces want to throw the country into chaos ... and show the president's and his government's inability to ensure public security,'' she said in a statement.

In 2001, some liberal government officials, backed by Sarsenbayev, presented President Nazarbayev with a dossier on Aliyev's alleged plans to unseat him and demanded political reforms. Nazarbayev sent Aliyev to Vienna as Kazakhstan's ambassador to Austria and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and sacked the officials, who now make up the core of the country's opposition. Sarsenbayev was demoted.

Nazarbayeva controls the country's most powerful media company, which last year sued Sarsenbayev for slander. In the trial, Sarsenbayev testified about alleged violations by Nazarbayeva in building the media empire. He was found guilty and fined.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Ninety-nine percent of people tried in China for ``endangering state security'' are found guilty, a prominent human rights activist said on Tuesday, calling on President Hu Jintao to release two detained journalists.

Such state security cases -- many involving perceived threats to Communist rule, spying or the theft of murkily defined state secrets -- have the highest conviction rate of any crime in China, said John Kamm, head of the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation.

Moreover, those found guilty get the longest sentences, with two-thirds of all such cases resulting in terms of five years or more, Kamm, the veteran China businessman-turned-campaigner, told Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents' Club.

From the start of 1998 to the end of 2004, there were 4,500 people prosecuted for endangering state security, he said citing data from the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

``The great majority were detained for non-violent expression of their political and religious beliefs,'' Kamm said.

Citing several polls, Kamm noted that China's image and popularity on the international stage had plummeted in the past year and he put it down to a steady flow of negative news reports out of China, blocking Web sites, arresting journalists, covering up environmental disasters and closing newspapers, among others.

``China's deteriorating international image is impacting the country's ability to achieve its foreign policy goals, and could well affect its ability to stage a successful Olympics in 2008,'' he said.

Hu, who is scheduled to visit the United States in April, should take action soon if he wants to improve China's image, Kamm said, calling on him to order the release of journalists Ching Cheong and Zhao Yan.

Ching, a reporter for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper accused of spying for Taiwan, has been held since last April, and was formally arrested in August. New York Times researcher Zhao Yan was arrested in September 2004 and charged with exposing state secrets.

``If you want to restore China's international image to what it was 12 months ago, treating journalists better is a good place to start,'' Kamm said.

Kamm also called on Hu to resume the granting of sentence reductions and early releases for political prisoners -- a practise that he said has been frozen for the past year.

Dozens of protesters have been arrested during anti-government protests in the Belarus capital, Minsk.

The demonstrations were being held to remember opposition figures who have disappeared or been imprisoned under President Alexander Lukashenko's rule.

About 200 people gathered in a central square to defy a ban on public rallies.

The protesters were also showing their support for the main opposition candidate in the presidential election which is due to be held on 19 March.

Several people were beaten and violently dragged into waiting police wagons, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

Police also dispersed a second rally held near the building of the Belarussian KGB security service.

Oles Atroshchenkov, a youth activist, said at least 30 activists were arrested, including one of the rally organisers, Irina Khalip.

Full story here.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A bill introduced in Congress would make it more difficult for US businesses to comply with China's request for Internet data that could be used to repress its people.

The "Global Online Freedom Act of 2006", introduced in the House of Representatives by Republican Representative Chris Smith, who chairs a House subcommittee on human rights, and several other lawmakers aims "to promote freedom of expression on the Internet".

The measure also aimed to "protect United States businesses from coercion to participate in repression by authoritarian foreign governments."

The bill's introduction came one day after House lawmakers summoned executives from Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Google to Congress for a hearing on China's censorship of online information.

The legislation would "prohibit any United States businesses from cooperating with officials of Internet-restricting countries in effecting the political censorship of online content," according to a draft of the legislation.

It also aims to promote the flow of "free and uncensored information" on the Internet, including in countries like China, where the government recently has intensified a crackdown on dissident Internet traffic.

In addition to China, the bill says it aims to counter online censorship by the governments of Belarus, Cuba,
Iran, Libya, the Maldives and Myanmar, among other countries.

"Technology companies in the United States that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian foreign governments have a responsibility to comply with the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," the legislation said.

Full story here.

BERLIN (AP) -- Germany's highest court Wednesday struck down a law that would have allowed the government to shoot down hijacked airliners as a last resort in a terrorist attack.

President Horst Koehler signed the air safety bill last year, but he encouraged a review by the Federal Constitutional Court amid heated debate over whether the state has a right to kill citizens even to save the lives of others. A complaint was filed by a group of lawyers and a flight captain.

In its ruling, the court found the bill ''incompatible with the fundamental right to life and with the guarantee of human dignity'' for innocent passengers on an aircraft.

It also found that allowing the military to shoot down civilian airliners violates a constitutional bar on the military being deployed for domestic security -- except in natural disasters or after a particularly serious accident has happened.

The law was proposed by the government of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and after a German stole a small plane in January 2003 and threatened to crash it into Frankfurt's skyscrapers. He landed at the city's airport about two hours later.

''We must now examine together the question of how we create the legal basis so that citizens are protected against terrorist attacks from the air,'' Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said.

That, he said, would include considering possible constitutional changes.

At a November court hearing, then-Interior Minister Otto Schily defended the bill, saying the government was obliged to do everything it could to protect its citizens from terrorism.

However, he said a shoot-down order -- which would have been made by the defense minister -- was unlikely in practice. He argued that authorities did not have enough time to take action against the hijacked airliners that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

The parliamentary leader of the governing Social Democrats noted that the court's ruling effectively meant airliners could be shot down only if they were unmanned or had no one other than terrorists on board. That, Peter Struck said, gave politicians ''a responsibility that it will be difficult for us to do justice to.''

Wednesday's ruling came amid a long-running debate in Germany over whether the post-World War II constitution should be amended to allow the military's use for domestic security purposes.

Ahead of this summer's soccer World Cup in Germany, conservative Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble repeatedly has advocated a change.

However, the center-left Social Democrats, who make up half the government, strongly oppose the idea -- arguing that no change is necessary and the military is not suited to policing tasks. A change would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.

''The interior minister should give up on his efforts'' to have the military deployed at the World Cup, Struck said.

Editor's commentary: This decision obviously influenced by German left parties has only one meaning and that is: Leftist terrorists can freely blackmail, terrorize and murder people and government must bow to all of their demands. It would be understandable not to shoot the plain hijacked by terrorists if they do not intend to crash the plain or cause further deaths but sacrificing people on the ground for people's right to die in suicidal attack is simply insane. If terrorists hijack the plane with clear intent to crash it with all passengers on any designated target then passengers will die anyway so court's decision to protect passengers lives by doing nothing is idiotic since their lives can't be protected no matter what. Why thousands of people have to die to protect passengers rights in those hijacked planes to die as well!? Following their idiotic logic it would be perfectly OK for government to give nuclear weapons to the terrorists so that they can kill millions of people just to supposedly save few hostages although anyone is a fool to trust terrorists in the first place at all. Lives of few can't be more important than the lives of many. Life is not a privilege and out of context quotations from Bible are nothing but heresy. Why would life of any terrorist or hostage would be so precious to sacrifice lives of innocent people?

Reuters - February 3rd, 2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department said on Friday that a high-level visit to Belarus by U.S. and European Union officials has been canceled because Belorussian authorities would not issue visas.

``We are both disappointed by the failure of the Belorussian authorities to take this opportunity to engage in an open and frank dialogue with the international community,'' said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The officials, Robert Cooper, the EU's Director General for External and Political-Military Affairs and Dan Fried, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, had planned the trip to discuss upcoming Presidential elections in Belarus.

``We both believe that it is vital that Presidential elections on 19 March be conducted in a free and fair manner,'' McCormack said.