Anwar Ibrahim

LONDON, Sept. 11--Malaysian rebel politician Anwar Ibrahim said in an interview published on Saturday he planned to return to politics if he wins his fight to clear his criminal record, Reuters reported.
"I'm committed to the reform agenda and this can only be expressed effectively in a functioning democracy in partisan politics," he told the Financial Times. "If this requires I take a road in having to contest in the elections, I'll do it."
The 57-year-old former deputy prime minister was unexpectedly released from prison last week after serving almost six years on what he calls trumped-up charges of sodomy and corruption. Malaysia's Federal Court overturned the sodomy charges.
Anwar hopes the court will also strike down his last criminal conviction for corruption, which would enable him to return to political life immediately.
Speaking from Germany where he is recovering from spinal surgery, Anwar also said he wanted to form a "responsible opposition" rather than join the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi or the ruling party UMNO.
"I don't wish at this stage to be part of the government," Anwar told the Financial Times. "I want to express my views, but not necessarily by joining the ruling party of government.
"I don't want to give any indication (in this direction) because I think we need to press upon the public that a responsible opposition is a necessity in a functioning
democracy."

A woman holds a banner during a demonstration asking for the release of Italian aid organization 'Un Ponte Per Baghdad' (A Bridge for Baghdad) volunteers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, in Rome, Italy, Sept. 10. (AP Photo)

ROME, Sept. 11--Tens of thousands of people joined a torch lit rally through Rome late Friday as the Italian government stepped up efforts to secure the release of two women aid workers held hostage in Iraq.
Children and adults marched in silence under rainbow-colored banners and slogans calling for peace in Iraq, pressing for the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta.
Organizers said 80,000 people turned out in support.
Pari and Torretta were kidnapped on Tuesday from the offices of their aid agency in Baghdad, less than a month after an Italian reporter, Enzo Baldoni, was seized and executed by militants.
"We hope that this demonstration will be a signal for peace in Iraq and for the release of all hostages, Italian, Iraqi and French," said Ileana, 34, a volunteer for the Italian charity Un Ponte Per Baghdad (A Bridge to Baghdad), for which both hostages work.
President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi joined the appeal in a televised message on the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the United States.
"They are citizens of a country which nourishes a sincere and long-standing sentiment of friendship toward the Islamic world," he said of the two women.
"They decided to go to Iraq in a gesture of human solidarity. We anxiously await their release. The Italian people, as one, demand it."
The march came as Rome said it was prepared to lobby for the release of any Iraqi prisoners being held unfairly in the country, in an apparent bid to meet a purported ultimatum set by the kidnappers.
A statement earlier Friday in the name of the Ansar Al-Zawahiri group gave Rome 24 hours to promise to release Muslim women prisoners in Iraq in return for details about the two Italian volunteers.

JABALYA,
Occupied Palestine, Sept. 11--Israel pulled most of its forces out of the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday after a four-day incursion and soldiers reopened main roads to Palestinian traffic, Palestinian security sources said.
The army said the raid, Israel's largest in Gaza in months, had been staged to halt rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns. It came days after twin suicide bus bombings killed 16 in the city of Beersheba on Aug. 31, Reuters reported.
Eight Palestinians were killed in the latest Gaza incursion, five of them civilians, and more than 100 wounded, medics said.
Witnesses said troops and tanks withdrew from Jabalya, Gaza's largest refugee camp, before dawn. Later, the soldiers pulled out of other northern Gaza areas but kept a limited presence near Beit Hanoun, witnesses and Palestinian security sources said.
An Israeli military source confirmed the troops had pulled out of Jabalya and other areas but would remain elsewhere in northern Gaza to prevent the launching of makeshift rockets, known as Qassams, at Israeli towns.
Two such rockets landed in Israel on Friday.
As the troops moved out of the Jabalya area, several key roads were reopened to Palestinian traffic elsewhere in Gaza following talks between Israeli and Palestinian officers, Palestinian sources said.
But other restrictions on Palestinian traffic have been tightened. On Friday the Israeli army sealed off the Palestinian territories for the Jewish holiday season in Israel.
The holiday restrictions come on top of already tight limits on Palestinian movement, including within the territories, which are riddled with army checkpoints and roadblocks.
Citing the threat of Palestinian attacks, the army said it had imposed a "general closure" on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a strict travel ban expected to stay in place for several weeks.

Pakistani women with candles and placards attend an anti-terrorism rally, Sept. 10, in Multan, Pakistan, ahead of the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. (AP Photo)

BANGKOK, Thailand, Sept. 11--Three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, victims' relatives in Asia mourned their losses anew Saturday, while officials tightened security days after a major suicide bombing in Indonesia, AP reported.
In Pakistan, a radical Islamic group used the anniversary to protest American policies in Iraq. "We are holding these rallies to tell the people that America is the enemy of peace," Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, deputy leader of a coalition, told The Associated Press.
The family of Orasri Liangthanasan, one of two Thai women killed at the World Trade Center in New York City, was to gather at a Buddhist temple in Bangkok to pray and perform a traditional merit making ceremony.
Orasri's eldest brother, Sathaporn, said the family still kept her bedroom furnished with the young woman's belongings and photographs, according to The Bangkok Post newspaper.
The family built a Buddhist meditation house in northern Lampang province and established a memorial fund at a Bangkok hospital to help keep Orasri's memory alive, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, Bangkok police stepped up security at embassies and other international venues around the Thai capital to guard against any possible attacks on the anniversary Saturday, reports said.
In Japan, a top government spokesman acknowledged the loss of "many precious lives, including those of 24 Japanese" in the Sept. 11 attacks, which triggered other attacks around the world.
"We are entering a period in which one terrorist attack leads to another," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told reporters. "Each country should make efforts and also work closely globally to prevent this despicable crime of terrorism."
Australia's major political parties kept campaigning for the country's Oct. 9 federal elections low key, refraining from announcing any new policies.
In the southern city of Melbourne, a mosque opened its doors for a multifaith commemoration of the terror strikes, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.
Australia--a strong US ally in the war on terror--paused to remember not only the Sept. 11 attacks but also Thursday's deadly bombing of its embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, which killed nine Indonesians were killed.
Indonesia--the world's largest Muslim nation--was preoccupied with the aftermath of the suicide attack, and the Sept. 11 anniversary went unmentioned by the media or the government. Anger runs high there over the US-led war in Iraq.
In Pakistan, the anniversary sparked fears of possible security threats, and authorities deployed hundreds of extra police and paramilitary soldiers to embassies, government buildings and other potential targets.
Officials said they would not allow protests or rallies to disrupt the peace.
"Our security are already alert and doing their work well, but due to third anniversary of the 9/11 events, we have asked them to be extra vigilant and alert," Interior Ministry spokesman Abdur Rauf Chaudhry said.

PORTSMOUTH, USA, Sept. 11--US President George W. Bush on Friday rewarded Tripoli for pledging to abandon its nuclear weapons quest by giving the green light to monies for promoting US exports to Libya, AFP said.
In a memorandum for US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush acknowledged that Libya was in violation of a US law that would curtail such aid because Tripoli received technology meant to help it produce atomic weapons.
"I hereby determine and certify that the continued termination of assistance, as required by this section, would have a serious adverse effect on vital United States interests and that I have received reliable assurances that Libya will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons or assist other nations in doing so," the president wrote.
"It is in the national interest for the Export-Import Bank to guarantee, insure or extend credit or participate in the extension of credit in support of United States exports to Libya," he said in the statement, which the White House made public.
The United States hopes to wrap up, this month, ongoing talks that could effectively lead to declaring Libya free of weapons of mass destruction, a State Department official said September 1.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States hoped to tell Tripoli that it had a "reasonable degree of confidence" that Libya had met the commitment it made in December 2003 to dismantle its nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs.
Bush lifted most sanctions against Libya in April and there is now a permanent US diplomatic presence in Tripoli for the first time since the early 1980s.

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Sept. 11--More than 1,000 Indonesian Muslims demonstrated in central Jakarta Saturday to call for Islamic law and to protest a deadly bombing blamed on Islamic extremists outside the Australian embassy here, AFP said.
About 1,500 members of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia gathered at the city's main traffic circle to denounce the bombing that killed at least nine Indonesians and wounded 180.
Police say their prime suspect is Azahari Husin, a Malaysian alleged member of Jemaah Islamiyah, an
Al-Qaeda-linked extremist group that seeks an Islamic state in parts of Southeast Asia.
Hizbut Tahrir is part of an international movement to revive an Islamic caliphate or dominion but the protesters said they reject violence as a means of achieving their goal.
"Islam against terrorism," said one of their posters.
The group's spokesman, Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, told AFP that Hizbut Tahrir was opposed to violence and terrorism because it is against the sharia, or Islamic law.
"Sharia forbids people to kill indiscriminately and to destroy private and public property," he said.
About one quarter of the marchers were women wearing white head coverings. Many of the male demonstrators wore white caps with headbands praising God, in Arabic.
Most people in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, practise a tolerant strain of the religion.

GUATEMALA CITY, Sept. 11--Prosecutors searched the Guatemalan Defense Ministry on Friday for secret files that may explain the fate of more than $100 million in public funds at the center of a scandal over military purchases.
Prosecutors are investigating allegations by a retired general that four former defense ministers and the son of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt diverted the funds from state coffers during 2000-2004, when Alfonso Portillo was Guatemala's president, Reuters reported.
The armed forces say the cash was used to buy ammunition and equipment.
A judge, a prosecutor and lawyers accompanied Defense Minister Cesar Mendez Pinelo to the ministry's finance department to look for the files, which the army says explain what happened to the money.
The Guatemalan military had never before been ordered to open secret documents to civilians, and defense lawyers had hoped for a last-minute court order to stop the files from being opened for reasons of national security.
The retired general, Otto Perez Molina, who is now a congressman, lodged a legal complaint charging that at least part of the money, which reportedly came from the education budget and external loans, was earmarked to buy ammunition that was never delivered to army stores.
The four former defense ministers and Rios Montt's son, who was the army chief of staff, all served under Portillo.
Judge Victor Hugo Herrera, who ordered the army to open its records, said he did not know what prosecutors would find.
"First we will establish if there are documents, exactly what type of documents exist and where they will be taken to," he said.
The army said it would assist the investigation and back legal action against anyone found to have broken the law.
"Nobody can steal public money and nothing is being hidden here," army spokesman Julio Paiz told Reuters.