ISLAMABAD — A pair of bombings on Sunday killed at least 10 people, including a government official, and wounded scores more, Pakistani authorities said.
The first blast hit the home of a local official in the Kurram area of Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal region, killing Sarfaraz Khan, his 13-year-old son and three of his young nephews, an official said. The Associated Press reported that Khan’s wife was also killed in the attack, but that could not be independently confirmed.
Some observers speculated that Khan’s killing was in retaliation for his cooperation with security forces targeting Islamist extremists in the region. Khan had been “vocal and helpful to the security agencies,” Syed Azfal, a political activist in Khan’s home town of Sadda, said in a telephone interview.
In a second attack, a suicide bomber in the capital of the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir detonated his explosives outside a prayer hall packed with worshipers marking Ashura, a Shiite Muslim holiday. The bomb killed at least five people and injured more than 80, authorities said.
There was no claim of responsibility for either attack.
The violence, on the two-year anniversary of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, underscored the volatility now challenging the increasingly weak civilian government led by her husband, President Asif Ali Zardari. Zardari has faced calls to resign since the Supreme Court earlier this month struck down an amnesty that shielded him and other officials from corruption charges. Zardari is still protected by a clause in the constitution giving the president immunity from prosecution, but opponents say they plan to file court petitions contesting his eligibility for the office.
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On Sunday, Zardari lashed out at his opponents for the first time since the court decision, telling a crowd near Bhutto’s tomb in southern Pakistan that the demands for his resignation were rooted in “evil intentions” that pose a threat to the nation’s fragile democracy.
The military is battling Pakistani Taliban insurgents based in the rugged tribal region bordering Afghanistan, including Kurram. Militants have stepped up attacks nationwide since the army opened a major offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan this fall. Many of the attacks have targeted security forces and installations.
10 killed in Pakistan bombings on anniversary of Bhutto assassination
Shaheed Benazir Bhutto got the honour to be the first woman prime Minister of a Muslim country. She was young when she was popularly elected as the outstanding leader of the people of Pakistan and assumed the responsibilities as the Prime Minister. She proved her capabilities by leading the country and the people surprising the whole world with her political and diplomatic skills. In most part of the world, Pakistan was identified with her name as Prime Minister. In no time, she had developed her influence on the world scene bringing people and countries closer to Pakistan using the style of people’s diplomacy.
Benazir Bhutto remained Prime Minister of Pakistan twice. She led the popular masses and won popular votes from all corners of Pakistan. Being a popular leader of the broad masses, she attracted large crowd on special occasions. When returned from forced exile for the first time in 1986, more than 1.8 million people gathered at the Lahore Airport to greet the most outstanding leader of the people of Pakistan. When she came to Karachi, more than two million people gathered at the Karachi Airport to greet Shaheed Benazir Bhutto.
She was again forced to leave the country following unceremonious dismissal of her Government by former President Farooq Leghari on concocted charges. When she returned before the scheduled general elections during the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf, again, more than two million people gathered at the Karachi Airport to greet the greatest leader.
In the course of controversy, the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf was afraid of the huge public gatherings and advised her to avoid holding mass public rallies, public meetings and demonstrations during the election campaign. She contemptuously rejected it as she considered the huge gathering as symbol of real political power of any party or leader and she would continue to lead such processions.
For her defiance, the enemies of the people of Pakistan targeted her and made the first serious attempt on her life by exploding a huge car bomb when the huge procession reached close to Karsaz in Karachi. More that 180 innocent people, all PPP workers, were martyred and hundreds of others injured, score of them maimed. But such cowardly attacked did not deter the great leader to stop his close links with her people at any stage of history. She continued her political campaign in all parts of Pakistan. The second attack was planned when she was in Lahore. Finally, the assassins succeeded in Rawalpindi when she addressed the huge public meeting at Liaquat Bagh.
Pigs still can’t fly, but this winter, the mayor of Moscow promises to keep it from snowing. For just a few million dollars, the mayor’s office will hire the Russian Air Force to spray a fine chemical mist over the clouds before they reach the capital, forcing them to dump their snow outside the city. Authorities say this will be a boon for Moscow, which is typically covered with a blanket of snow from November to March. Road crews won’t need to constantly clear the streets, and traffic – and quality of life – will undoubtedly improve.
The idea came from Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who is no stranger to playing God. In 2002, he spearheaded a project to reverse the flow of the vast River Ob through Siberia to help irrigate the country’s parched Central Asian neighbors. Although that idea hasn’t exactly turned out as planned – scientists have said it’s not feasible – this time, Luzhkov says, there’s no way he can fail. (See TIME’s photo-essay “Vladimir Putin: Action Figure.”)
Controlling the weather in Moscow is nothing new, he says. Ahead of the two main holidays celebrated in the city each year – Victory Day in May and City Day in September – the often cash-strapped air force is paid to make sure that it doesn’t, well, rain on the parades. With a city budget of $40 billion a year (larger than New York City’s budget), Moscow can easily afford the $2-3 million price tag to keep the skies blue as spectators watch the tanks and rocket launchers roll along Red Square. Now there’s a new challenge for the air force: Moscow’s notorious blizzards.
“You know how every year on City Day and Victory Day we create the weather?” Luzhkov asked a group of farmers outside Moscow in September, according to Russian media reports. “Well, we should do the same with the snow! Then outside Moscow there will be more moisture, a bigger harvest, while for us it won’t snow as much. It will make financial sense.” (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)
The plan was unsurprisingly rubber-stamped this week by the Moscow City Council, which is dominated by Luzhkov’s supporters. Then the city’s Department of Housing and Public Works described how it would work. The air force will use cement powder, dry ice or silver iodide to spray the clouds from Nov. 15 to March 15 – and only to prevent “very big and serious snow” from falling on the city, said Andrei Tsybin, the head of the department. This could mean that a few flakes will manage to slip through the cracks. Tsybin estimated that the total cost of keeping the storms at bay would be $6 million this winter, roughly half the amount Moscow normally spends to clear the streets of snow.
So far the main objection to the plan has come from Moscow’s suburbs, which will likely be inundated with snow if the plan goes forward. Alla Kachan, the Moscow region’s ecology minister, said the proposal still needs to be assessed by environmental experts and discussed with the people living in the area before Luzhkov can enact it. “The citizens of the region have some concerns. We have received lots of messages,” she told the RIA news agency. (Read TIME’s 1991 article “The End of the U.S.S.R.”)
With only a few weeks left before winter comes, environmentalists will have to work fast to keep Luzhkov from implementing his zaniest plan to date – and to stop the first snowflakes from wafting down to the city streets.
ALBANY, N.Y. – President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton are lending their political star power to an unlikely Democratic bid to win a special congressional election in an area that’s been a Republican bastion for more than a century.
The Nov. 3 contest in upstate New York’s 23rd Congressional District, a sprawling, 11-county area where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 45,000, is shaping up as a test of a struggling GOP and a possible gauge of Obama’s coattails.
Obama, who carried the district by 5 percentage points in his landslide victory in New York last year, forced the special election when he named the incumbent, Republican John McHugh, his Army secretary. The president will host a fundraiser for the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, on Tuesday in New York City.
In a fundraising e-mail for Owens, Clinton called the special election “bigger than just one candidate or one office … victory or defeat will also be seen as a referendum on President Obama’s agenda.”
Owens, 60, a Plattsburgh lawyer and retired Air Force captain, is one of three candidates competing for the seat. The others are Republican Dierdre Scozzafava, 49, a state Assemblywoman, and Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman, 59, a businessman.
Hoffman’s spokesman, Rob Ryan, said the race will be a referendum on Obama’s first 10 months and on the future of the Republican Party.
Democrats see an opening in the traditionally Republican district because Scozzafava and Hoffman are splitting the conservative vote. An Oct. 15 survey by Siena College showed Owens with 33 percent, Scozzafava with 29 percent and Hoffman with 23 percent. The poll of 617 likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
Conservative groups such as The Club for Growth have endorsed Hoffman. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed Scozzafava last week, in a move apparently aimed as shoring up the Republican’s support among conservatives.
Republicans have complained that Obama picked McHugh for the Army job because he viewed the 23rd as vulnerable. Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand won the nearby 20th district, another longtime GOP stronghold, in 2006, and Democrat Scott Murphy won a close special election in March to hold the seat after Gillibrand was appointed to the U.S. Senate.
Whatever Obama’s motivations, McHugh, who represented the 23rd District since 1993, has the credentials for the Army job. He served on the House Armed Services Committee for years and worked with the oft-deployed 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, which is in the district.
The compressed time frame of a special election — McHugh was confirmed only last month — leaves voters with little-known candidates and little time for introductions.
In the state Assembly, Scozzafava, of Gouverneur, has broken with the Republican conference only 5 percent of the time, but on high-profile issues such as same-sex marriage, greenhouse gas emissions, sex education in schools and gender identity discrimination. In the past she’s won the Working Families Line — a liberal minority party closely associated with the Democratic Party. It endorsed Owens this time.
Scozzafava’s potential crossover appeal has the National Republican Congressional Committee hopeful it can hold onto the seat, one of only three that the Republicans controlled in the state’s 29-member congressional delegation.
Owens, is the managing partner at the law firm Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane, & Trombley, and has practiced law for 30 years. Hoffman, of North Elba, is the managing partner in an accounting firm and oversees a family business that includes investment, real estate and construction.
State GOP Chairman Edward Cox said the 23rd is a swing district with varied demographics, including organized labor, hunting enthusiasts and farmers. He said the combined vote of Conservatives and Republicans will be heard as a rejection of Obama’s agenda — no matter the winner.
“The national relevance is that the vote against Obama is going to be overwhelming,” Cox said.
June O’Neill, executive committee chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said the seat is symbolically important for Republicans nationally.
“Let’s face it,” she said, “this seat should be a safe Republican seat and — as recent events and the most recent poll has shown — it is no longer a safe Republican seat.”
MIR ALI, Pakistan – The Pakistani army and the Taliban claimed to be inflicting heavy casualties on each other as fierce fighting raged Sunday on the second day of a military assault on an al-Qaida and Taliban sanctuary close to the Afghan border.
The outcome of the operation in South Waziristan stands to shape the future of nuclear-armed Pakistan and the militant groups seeking to topple its U.S.-backed government. The region is home to jihadists behind soaring terrorist attacks around the country, as well as al-Qaida and other extremists believed to be plotting strikes in the West.
The army said 60 militants had been killed on the first day of the operation, while six soldiers had died. The Taliban claimed to have inflicted “heavy casualties” on the army and to have pushed invading soldiers back into their bases.
It was not possible to independently verify the conflicting claims because the army is blocking access to the battlefield and surrounding towns.
“We know how to fight this war and defeat the enemy with the minimum loss of our men,” Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told The Associated Press from an undisclosed location. “This is a war imposed on us and we will defend our land till our last man and our last drop of our blood. This is a war bound to end in the defeat of the Pakistan army.”
Tariq also said the Taliban were behind three commando-style raids on law enforcement agencies in the eastern city of Lahore on Thursday that killed around 30 people as well as the deadly bombing of a police station in the northwestern city of Peshawar a day later.
Accounts from residents and those fleeing South Waziristan on Sunday suggested that the 30,000 Pakistani troops were in for a bloodier time than in the Swat Valley, another northwestern region that the army successfully wrested away from insurgents earlier this year.
“Militants are offering very tough resistance to any movement of troops,” Ehsan Mahsud, a resident of Makeen, a town in the region, told The Associated Press in the town of Mir Ali, close to the battle zone. He and a friend arrived there early Sunday after traveling through the night.
Mahsud said the army appeared to be mostly relying on air strikes and artillery against militants occupying high ground. He said the insurgents were firing heavy machine guns at helicopter gunships, forcing the air force to use higher-flying jets.
The army is up against about 10,000 local militants and about 1,500 foreign fighters, most of them from Central Asia. They control roughly 1,275 square miles (3,310 square kilometers) of territory, or about half of South Waziristan, in areas loyal to former militant chief Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a U.S. missile strike in August.
Officials have said they envisage the operation will last two months, when winter weather will make fighting difficult.
A brief army statement said 60 militants had been killed, along with six soldiers, since Saturday. It said the army had secured high regions close to Razmak, where the army has had a base for several years, and destroyed six militant anti-aircraft gun positions.
A resident in Wana — the main town in South Waziristan and in the heart of Taliban-held territory — said the insurgents had left the town and were stationed on the borders of the region, determined to block any army advance.
“All the Taliban who used to be around here have gone to take their position to protect the Mehsud boundary,” Azamatullah Wazir said by phone Sunday. “The army will face difficulty to get in there.”
Intelligence officials said Saturday that the ground troops were advancing on two flanks and a northern front of a central part of South Waziristan controlled by the Mehsuds. The areas being surrounded include the insurgent bases of Ladha and Makeen, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to brief the media.
As many as 150,000 civilians — possibly more — have left in recent months after the army made clear it was planning an assault, but as many as 350,000 could still be in the region. The United Nations has been stockpiling relief supplies in a town near the region, but authorities are not expecting a major refugee crisis like the one that occurred during the offensive this year in the Swat Valley.
Over the last three months, the Pakistani air force has been bombing targets in South Waziristan, while the army has said it has sealed off many Taliban supply and escape routes. The military has been trying to secure the support of local tribal armies in the fight.
TEHRAN, Iran – A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guard and at least 26 others in an area of southeastern Iran that has been at the center of a simmering Sunni insurgency, state media reported.
The official IRNA news agency said the dead included the deputy commander of the Guard’s ground force, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, as well as a chief provincial Guard commander for the area, Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh. The other dead were Guard members or local tribal leaders. More than two dozen others were wounded, state radio reported.
The commanders were on their way to a meeting with local tribal leaders in the Pishin district near Iran’s border with Pakistan when an attacker with explosives around his waist blew himself up, IRNA said. The explosion occurred at the entrance of a sports complex where the meeting was to be held.
Top provincial prosecutor Mohammad Marzieh was quoted by the semi-official ISNA news agency as saying that a militant group from Iran’s Sunni Muslim minority called Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, claimed responsibility.
The region in Iran’s southeast has been the focus of violent attacks by Jundallah, which has waged a low-level insurgency in recent years. The group accuses Iran’s Shiite-dominated government of persecution and has carried out attacks against the Revolutionary Guard and Shiite targets in the southeast.
Iranian officials have accused Jundallah of receiving support from al-Qaida and the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan, though some analysts who have studied the group dispute such a link.
Jundallah’s campaign is one of several small-scale ethnic and religious insurgencies in Iran that have fueled sporadic and sometimes deadly attacks in recent years — though none have amounted to a serious threat to the government.
The attack does raise questions about Iran’s grip on a sensitive border region beset by criminal gangs and drug smuggling.
The latest violence, a symptom of the tension between Iran’s majority Shiites and impoverished minority Sunnis in the southeast, appeared to have no connection with the street unrest triggered by the dispute over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in June.
Ahmadinejad vowed to strike back at those behind Sunday’s attack, the official IRNA news agency reported.
“The criminals will soon get the response for their anti-human crimes,” IRNA quoted him as saying. Ahmadinejad also accused unspecified foreigners of involvement.
Iranian officials have often raised concerns that the United States might try to incite members of Iran’s many ethnic and religious minorities against the Shiite-led government, which is dominated by ethnic Persians.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the United States condemned what he called an “act of terrorism.” Reports of alleged U.S. involvement are “completely false,” he said.
The Guard commanders targeted Sunday were heading to a meeting with local tribal leaders to promote unity between the Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.
In April, Iran increased security in Sistan-Baluchistan Province, at the center of the tension, by placing it under the command of the Guard, which took over from local police forces.
The 120,000-strong Revolutionary Guard controls Iran’s missile program and has its own ground, naval and air units.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, condemned the assassination of the Guard commanders, saying the bombing was aimed at disrupting security in southeastern Iran.
“We express our condolences for their martyrdom. … The intention of the terrorists was definitely to disrupt security in Sistan-Baluchistan Province,” Larijani told an open session of the parliament broadcast live on state radio.
In May, Jundallah claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque that killed 25 people in Zahedan, the capital of Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province, which has witnessed some of Jundallah’s worst attacks. Thirteen members of the faction were convicted in the attack and hanged in July.
Jundallah is made up of Sunnis from the Baluchi ethnic minority, which can also be found in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The group has carried out bombings, kidnappings and other attacks against Iranian soldiers and other forces in recent years, including a car bombing in February 2007 that killed 11 members of the Revolutionary Guard near Zahedan.
Jundallah also claimed responsibility for the December 2006 kidnapping of seven Iranian soldiers in the Zahedan area. It threatened to kill them unless members of the group in Iranian prisons were released. The seven were released a month later, apparently after negotiations through tribal mediators.
Despite Iran’s claims of an al-Qaida link, Chris Zambelis, a Washington-based risk management consultant who has studied Jundallah, said in a recent article that there is no evidence al-Qaida is supporting the group. He does note, however, that the group has begun to use the kinds of suicide bombings associated with the global terror network.
He said Jundallah likely looks to Baluchi insurgents in Pakistan as a source of inspiration and possibly material support. Its ties to the Taliban based in Pakistani Baluchistan are less clear, but Zambelis said any connections are probably limited to smuggling between the two countries.
“Jundallah’s contacts with the Taliban are most likely based on jointly profiting from the illicit trade and smuggling as opposed to ideology,” Zambelis wrote in the July issue of West Point’s CTC Sentinel.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – An Arizona homicide investigation now includes three deaths after a woman died more than a week after participating in a sweat lodge ceremony that hospitalized nearly two dozen people.
Liz Neuman of Minnesota died Saturday at a Flagstaff hospital, Yavapai County sheriff’s spokesman Dwight D’Evelyn said.
The 49-year-old suffered multiple organ damage during the Oct. 8 ceremony at a resort near Sedona, a resort town 115 miles north of Phoenix that draws many in the New Age spiritual movement.
Authorities were treating all three deaths as homicides, but no charges have been filed.
D’Evelyn did not provide a city of residence for Neuman, but public records showed an address in Prior Lake, about 25 miles southwest of Minneapolis.
Neuman was among more than 50 people crowded inside the sweat lodge run by self-help guru James Arthur Ray. An emergency call two hours after they entered the lodge reported two people not breathing.
Twenty-one people were taken to area hospitals with illnesses ranging from dehydration to kidney failure. Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y., and James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee died upon arrival at a hospital.
No one else remains hospitalized.
Authorities haven’t determined what caused the deaths. Autopsy results on Brown and Shore are pending further testing.
The Rev. Meredith Ann Murray of Bellingham, Wash., who has completed all of Ray’s retreats, said Neuman was among Ray’s earliest followers and had attended dozens of his events.
According to Ray’s Web site, Neuman was the leader of the Minneapolis-area “Journey Expansion Team.” The teams, developed by Ray’s friends and followers around the country, meet to exchange ideas on his principles. The next Minneapolis-area meeting is scheduled for Oct. 23.
Ray had rented the Angel Valley Retreat Center for his five-day “Spiritual Warrior” event that culminated in the sweat lodge ceremony. Participants paid between $9,000 and $10,000 to attend the retreat.
Ray declined to be interviewed by the sheriff’s office on the night of the incident and Arizona authorities said he had not spoken to them as of Thursday. In his first public appearance Tuesday in Los Angeles, Ray told a crowd of about 200 that he has hired his own investigative team to determine what went wrong.
His spokesman, Howard Bragman, has said that Ray’s team and Ray’s attorney are cooperating with the sheriff’s investigators.
More than 100 people attended the funeral for Brown on Saturday at Holy Name of Jesus Church in Otisville, N.Y., according to The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. The avid hiker and surfer who had a passion for art was remembered as a spiritual seeker.
Services for Shore were held late Saturday afternoon at the Hubbard Lodge in Milwaukee.
UNITED NATIONS – In the highest-level conference yet on climate change, 100 world leaders come to the United Nations on Tuesday to decide how to start an energy revolution.
While attention turns to U.S. President Barack Obama’s first U.N. speech, the most substantial changes may come from what the presidents of China, India and other major economies spell out for billions of people and their households, businesses and farms in the decades ahead.
Those leaders are expected to make more ambitious commitments than the U.S. leader, whose hands are still tied by Congress.
“We are asking developing countries to do as we say, not as we did,” said Ed Miliband, Britain’s climate secretary, whose nation has pledged to cut carbon emissions by more than a third from 1990 levels by 2020, and said 40 percent of the UK’s electricity by then would come from renewable sources.
Tuesday’s U.N. summit and the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh at the end of this week are intended to add pressure on the United States and other rich nations to commit to cuts and provide the billions of dollars needed to help developing nations stop cutting down their forests or burning coal.
China and the U.S. each account for about 20 percent of all the world’s greenhouse gas pollution created when coal, natural gas or oil are burned. The European Union is next, generating 14 percent, followed by Russia and India, which each account for 5 percent.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to lay out new plans for extending China’s energy-saving programs and targets for reducing the “intensity” of its carbon pollution — carbon dioxide emission increases as related to economic growth.
China has been cutting energy intensity for the past four years and could the new carbon intensity goal in a five-year plan for development until 2015. China already has said it is seeking to use 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
India, too, may draw away some of the spotlight for laying out plans for the fifth-biggest contributor of global warming gases to bump up fuel efficiency, burn coal more cleanly, preserve forests and grow more organic crops.
The United States, under former President George W. Bush’s administration, long cited inaction by China and India as the reason for rejecting mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases.
Tuesday’s meeting is intended to rally momentum for crafting a new global climate pact at Copenhagen, Denmark, in December. Bush rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for cutting global emissions of warming gases, which expires at the end of 2012, based on its impact on the U.S. economy and exclusion of major developing nations like China and India, both major polluters.
But neither China nor India say they will agree to binding greenhouse-gas cuts like those envisioned in a new climate pact to start in 2013. They question why they should, when not even the U.S. will agree to join rich nations in scaling back their pollution.
“The crisis today on climate change is the inability of the United States to put on the table credible emissions reduction targets for 2020,” said Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister.
The EU is urging other rich countries to match its pledge to cut emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and has said it would cut up to 30 percent if other rich countries follow suit.
Japan’s incoming prime minister, whose nation generates more than 4 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, has announced a new goal of a 25 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.
Obama has announced a target of returning to 1990 levels of greenhouse emissions by 2020. Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate envoy, said the Obama administration is moving “full speed ahead” toward helping craft a global climate deal.
But with Congress moving slowly on a measure to curb emissions, the United States could soon find itself with little influence when 120 countries convene in Copenhagen.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a climate bill this summer that would set the first mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. But action in the Senate has been delayed as lawmakers wrestle with overhauling the health care system.
China’s ambition to grow quickly but cleanly soon may vault it to “front-runner” status — far ahead of the United States — in taking on global warming, the U.N. climate chief said Monday.
“China and India have announced very ambitious national climate change plans. In the case of China, so ambitious that it could well become the front-runner in the fight to address climate change,” U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer told The Associated Press. “The big question mark is the U.S.”
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – The daring return of deposed President Manuel Zelaya has thrust Honduras back onto the world stage and posed a sharp challenge to interim leaders determined to hold new elections without him after a June coup.
Thousands of Zelaya supporters defied a curfew and spent the night surrounding Brazil’s embassy, where the leader remained holed up Tuesday, a day after slipping back into the country. In exile since June 28, Zelaya said he had traveled for 15 hours overland in a series of vehicles to pull off the stealth homecoming.
The government of interim President Roberto Micheletti ordered a 26-hour shutdown of the capital Tegucigalpa beginning Monday afternoon, closed the airport and set up roadblocks on highways leading into town. The measures were taken to keep out more Zelaya supporters from other regions in an attempt to head off the big protests that disrupted the city after his ouster.
But Zelaya loyalists ignored the decree and surrounded the embassy dancing and cheering and using their cell phones to light up the streets after electricity was cut off on the block housing the embassy.
“We’re here to support him and protect him, and we’re going to stay here as long as it’s physically possible,” said Carlos Salgado, a 43-year-old jewerly maker from Zelaya’s home state of Olancho.
Supported by the U.S. and other governments since his ouster, Zelaya called for negotiations with the leaders who forced him from the country at gunpoint. But Micheletti urged Brazil to turn Zelaya over to Honduran authorities for trial.
Zelaya told The Associated Press that he was trying to establish contact with the interim government to start negotiations on a solution to the standoff that started when soldiers flew him to Costa Rica.
“As of now, we are beginning to seek dialogue,” he said by telephone, though he gave few details.
Talks moderated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias stalled over the interim government’s refusal to accept Zelaya’s reinstatement to the presidency under a power-sharing agreement that would limit his powers and prohibit him from attemting to revise the constitution.
In June, the country’s Congress and courts, alarmed by Zelaya’s political shift into a close alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuba, backed the president’s removal.
He was arrested on orders of the Supreme Court on charges of treason and abuse of power for ignoring court orders against holding a referendum on reforming the constitution. His opponents feared he wanted to end a constitutional ban on re-election — a charge Zelaya denied.
Arias called his proposed compromise the last option to end the Honduran crisis. “I think this is the best opportunity, the best time now that Zelaya’s back in his country,” he said in New York.
Zelaya returned on the eve of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, where U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the opposing factions in Honduras to look for a peaceful solution.
“It is imperative that dialogue begin, that there be a channel of communication between President Zelaya and the de facto regime in Honduras,” Clinton said at a joint news conference with Arias.
Micheletti showed no inclination to give any ground, saying late Monday that Zelaya had violated Arias’ mediation effort by returning.
“Arias’ mediation in Honduras’ political problem has ended … and he has absolutely nothing else to do in this conflict,” Micheletti said in a televised interview.
The interim government was clearly caught off guard by Zelaya’s dramatic move. Only minutes before he appeared publicly at the Brazilian Embassy, Honduran officials said reports of his return were a lie. They soon ordered a 15-hour curfew, then later extended the shutdown by another 11 hours, until 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Speaking from the embassy, Zelaya summoned his countrymen to come to the capital for peaceful protests and urged the army to avoid attacking his supporters.
“It is the moment of reconciliation,” he said.
Teachers union leader Eulogio Chavez announced that the country’s 60,000 educators would go on strike indefinitely Tuesday to back Zelaya’s demand to be reinstated.
International leaders were almost unanimously against the armed removal of the president, worrying it could return Latin America to a bygone era of coups and instability. The United States, European Union and international agencies have cut aid to Honduras to press for his return.
The U.S. State Department announced Sept. 4 that it would not recognize results of the Nov. 29 presidential vote under current conditions — a ballot that was scheduled before Zelaya’s ouster. The coup has shaken up Washington’s relations with Honduras, traditionally one of its strongest allies in Central America.
The secretary general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, called for calm and warned Honduran officials to avoid any violation of the Brazilian diplomatic mission. “They should be responsible for the safety of president Zelaya and the Embassy of Brazil,” he said.
Zelaya said he had “evaded a thousand obstacles” in getting back to Tegucigalpa but declined to give specifics on who helped him cross the border, saying that he didn’t want to jeopardize their safety.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin said neither his country nor the OAS had any role in Zelaya’s journey before taking him in.
“We hope this opens a new stage in negotiations,” Amorin said.
But Honduras’ Foreign Relations Department accused Brazil of violating international law by “allowing Zelaya, a fugitive of Honduran justice, to make public calls to insurrection and political mobilization from its headquarters.”
In the days following the coup, at least two of the thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets were killed during clashes with security forces. Thousands of other Hondurans demonstrated in favor of the coup.
DENVER – Counterterrorism officials are warning mass transit systems around the nation to step up patrols because of fears an Afghanistan-born immigrant under arrest in Colorado may have been plotting with others to detonate backpack bombs aboard New York City trains.
Investigators say Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old shuttle van driver at the Denver airport, played a direct role in a terror plot that unraveled during a trip to New York City around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He made his first court appearance Monday and remained behind bars.
Zazi and two other defendants have not been charged with any terrorism counts, only the relatively minor offense of lying to the government. But the case could grow to include more serious charges as the investigation proceeds.
Zazi has publicly denied being involved in a terror plot, and defense lawyer Arthur Folsom dismissed as “rumor” any notion that his client played a crucial role.
Publicly, law enforcement officials have repeatedly said they are unaware of a specific time or target for any attacks. Privately, officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case said investigators have worried most about the possible use of backpack bombs on New York City trains, similar to attacks carried out in London and Madrid.
The investigation into Zazi’s role and how many others may be involved was ongoing. Two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation told The Associated Press late Monday that more than a half-dozen individuals were being scrutinized in the alleged plot.
The FBI said in a statement that “several individuals in the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere” were being investigated.
Backpacks and cell phones were seized last week from apartments in Queens where Zazi visited.
In a bulletin issued Friday, the FBI and Homeland Security Department warned that improvised explosive devices are the most common tactic to blow up railroads and other mass transit systems overseas. And they noted incidents in which bombs were made with peroxide.
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