KHOST, Afghanistan, Sept. 24--"Vote for President Hamid Karzai, or we will burn your houses down"--that is the message a Pashtun tribe has broadcast on radio a fortnight ahead of Afghanistan's first presidential elections, AFP said.
The threat, broadcast by the Terezay tribe in southeast Afghanistan's Khost province, competes with conflicting threats from Taliban insurgents roaming the border region who have vowed to kill people who take part in the vote.
Elders of the Terezay tribe, part of the Pashtun ethnic group to which Karzai belongs, called on fellow tribal members to support the incumbent and threatened arson if they voted for one of his 17 rivals.
"All the Terezay tribes' people should vote for Hamid Karzi...if anyone from Terezay tribe votes for other candidates, the tribe will burn their houses," said the statement, broadcast live on local radio.
Meanwhile "night letters" distributed by loyalists of the ousted Taliban rulers threaten to kill all of the 18 candidates and anyone who supports the October 9 election.
In a tape of the Terezay tribe's broadcast, obtained by AFP, the elders urged male and female members of the tribe to throw their support behind Karzai.
"All of Terezay tribe people, including males and females, have to vote for Hamid Karzai, because he is the only suitable person for the presidential post," it said. Some 120,000 to 150,000 Terezays are scattered throughout the mountains of southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Terezay elder Wakil Said Anwar, 55, said the threatening statement was jointly drafted by 300 tribal chiefs.
"We will back Karzai at the vote. No one from our tribe should ignore the decision," he said.
Afghanistan's UN-backed electoral commission condemned the tribe's call and said the elections should be free and fair.

Ukraine pledged in 2002 to provide Pakistan with 315 engines for Al-Khalid tanks over three years in a deal worth up to $150 million. (AFP File Photo)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 24--Pakistan's army has inducted a new locally-made tank, the military said, after four years in development with Chinese assistance, AFP reported.
The Al-Khalid MBT 2000 tank was formally presented to a cavalry regiment by vice army chief General Muhammad Yusaf Khan on Thursday at a heavy industries manufacturing plant just outside Islamabad.
"Production of this tank is a landmark achievement," Khan said at the induction ceremony, according to a military statement.
"The Al-Khalid tank is compatible with any modern tank of the world with an excellent power to weight ratio, enhanced firepower, high mobility, all weather day and night capability, excellent protection and a 125 mm smooth bore gun."
Pakistan and China agreed in 1990 to jointly develop the new tank, according to the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
The Al-Khalid tank features a recently-developed thermal viewer system to improve nocturnal fighting capability and a Ukrainian-manufactured engine, FAS said on its website.
Ukraine pledged in 2002 to provide Pakistan with 315 engines for Al-Khalid tanks over three years in a deal worth up to 150 million dollars, according to the Washington-based globalsecurity.org website.

Jacques Chirac

PARIS, Sept. 24--French President Jacques Chirac's ruling UMP party risks losing its outright majority in the upper house of parliament, the Senate, when a third of its seats are renewed in elections Sunday, AFP reported.
Candidates for the Union for a Popular Movement face a strong challenge from dissident canter-right lists in a number of constituencies, and party managers have warned that about ten of its seats are in danger.
Heavy losses would be seized on by the left-wing opposition as the government's third defeat after regional and European elections earlier this year, and a sign that it has lost the confidence of the public.
However any setback would be relative, as the Senate has an in-built conservative bias.
Currently the UMP has 162 seats in the 321-member body--a majority of one. If it loses seats it will be forced to share power with a centrist bloc led by the Union for French Democracy (UDF) which is looking to make gains.
The opposition Socialists hope to win five or six new seats, but have no chance of gaining control of the chamber because the electoral system works against them.
Senators are chosen by an electoral college consisting of some 150,000 regional, departmental and municipal councilors as well as the 577 members of the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly. Over-representation of conservative rural areas means an in-built leaning to the right.
The Senate's function is to vet legislation--though it can ultimately be over-ruled by the National Assembly--and to scrutinize government action. Senators normally hold other positions in local government and are expected to represent their region's interests in Paris.
Under the 1958 constitution the president of the Senate is the country's second ranking figure and takes over from the president if he is incapacitated or dies. The current tenant Christian Poncelet, 76, is hoping for a third term but could face a challenge after Sunday's vote.

MOSCOW, Sept. 24--Chechnya's rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov said Friday that warlord Shamil Basayev would be put on trial for masterminding the hostage siege in Beslan which killed more than 330 people, once fighting has stopped in the breakaway republic, AFP reported.
"Unfortunately, in conditions of war it is practically impossible to bring people guilty for such terrorist acts to justice," the former Chechen president said in a statement on a rebel website, www.chechenpress.com.
"However, I responsibly announce that after the end of the war, individuals guilty of illegal acts will be handed over to a court, including Shamil Basayev," he added.
Basayev has claimed responsibility for the three-day hostage taking earlier this month at a school in Beslan, southern Russia, in which at least 339 people died, more than half of them children.
Maskhadov, whose influence within the Chechen separatist movement has been eclipsed by extremists like Basayev accused of links to global Islamic terror groups, called for the creation of an international tribunal to try war crimes on both sides.
"But I have to point out that such acts (as Beslan) are a consequence and response to the genocidal war waged by the Russian leadership against the Chechen people, in which the Russian army has killed 250,000 people, including 42,000 children," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has angrily dismissed calls from some Western countries to hold negotiations with Chechen separatist leaders traditionally regarded as moderate such as Maskhadov, accusing them of double-standards in the fight against terrorism.
Putin sent troops into Chechnya in October 1999 in what he then billed as a lightning "anti-terror operation" but has since spiralled into a guerrilla war of attrition.
Russian federal forces and Chechen separatists waged a first 1994-1996 war following which Chechnya enjoyed de facto independence.

Red Cross workers help evacuate women leaving the Chalatenango Prison after they were released by prison gangs in El Salvador, Sept. 24. (AFP Photo)

SAN SALVADOR,
El Salvador,
Sept. 24--Prison gangs in El Salvador took more than 100 guards, inmates and visiting relatives hostage in two prison uprisings late Thursday to demand better rehabilitation programs and the transfer of gang members to another jail, prison authorities said.
An agreement was reached early Friday with the inmates, a mediator anounced, but only six hostages have so far been released--two prison guards, two women, a priest and a child, AFP reported.
"We have an agreement and soon it will be signed by both sides, but now the problem is that the relatives of the inmates want to leave the prison compound in a few hours, in full daylight," Prison Management Center spokeswoman Keyna Escobar told AFP.
San Salvador's auxiliary Roman Catholic Bishop Gregorio Chavez, one of three mediators the inmates had requested to talk with, said the hostages would be "put up temporarily at the city church" in Chalatenango, where one of the prison uprisings took place.
Inmates at Chalatenango prison, 72 kilometers north of here, and Cojutepeque, 33 kilometers east of here, staged simultaneous uprisings at 2130 GMT, Thursday, taking prison guards, inmates and their visiting relatives hostages in both compounds.
"It was a well planned operation carried out during visiting hours," on a religious holiday celebrating the Virgin of Mercy, the patron saint of prisons, Escobar told AFP after the uprisings became known.
"Forty-five civilians, a priest and two guards at Chalatenango prison and at least 60 more civilians at Cojutepeque," were taken hostage, she added.
Three hostages, two women and a girl, were released from Cojutepeque after Attorney General for Human Rights Beatrice Alamanni met with the inmates. A priest and two prison guards were released after the agreement was announced.
Alamanni said the inmates were listening to music on the radio and that they did not appear hostile.

COLOMBO,
Sri Lanka, Sept. 24--Sri Lankan government said a wave of killings blamed on Tamil Tiger rebels was undermining confidence in the peace process which has been stalled since April 2003, AFP said.
Suspected Tigers gunned down another rival political activist Friday, the day after four people were killed including the number two of an underground breakaway faction, officials said.
A government statement condemned the killing of people "holding views contrary to those of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)."
"The continued use of violence to eliminate dissent does not inspire confidence," the government said in a brief statement.
Norway led another failed bid this month to revive negotiations between the Tamil Tigers and the government. Diplomats say the efforts to restart the talks have been set back by the LTTE factional fighting.
The Tigers, who want a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, have been accused of killing more than 250 of their rivals despite the Norwegian-arranged ceasefire in place since February 2002.
The Tigers have denied involvement in the killings.
More than 60,000 people died in Sri Lanka's ethnic war from 1972 until the ceasefire.

NEW DELHI, India, Sept. 24--Witnesses to anti-Muslim riots that ravaged India's Gujarat state in 2002 remain too intimidated to testify despite the new government's pledges to deliver justice, Human Rights Watch said Friday.
The New York-based rights group called on India to set up a national witness protection program and to take action against Hindu hardliners allegedly threatening riot victims to keep them silent, AFP said.
The Supreme Court last month reopened half the cases from the Gujarat riots after high-profile cases in which two Muslim women, one of whom said she was gang-raped, complained of threats that prevented them from testifying.
"But individual courage alone will not allow fair trials to proceed," Human Rights Watch said. "Most (witnesses) remain too afraid to tell their stories in public."
In an echo of the government's attitude during the riots, police have been refusing to record witnesses' complaints of threats, Human Rights Watch said in a 30-page report.
It said tax authorities had also singled out for investigation rights campaigners working on riot cases.
Some 2,000 people died in vigilante violence in the western state that broke out in February 2002 when an allegedly Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindu activists, killing 59 people.
Human rights groups say Gujarat's Hindu nationalist government turned a blind eye and at times encouraged the bloodshed.
No Hindus have been imprisoned over the riots. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's left-leaning government, which defeated a coalition allied with Gujarat's leaders in a May election upset, has vowed to speed up prosecution.

VIENNA, Austria, Sept. 24--The UN nuclear watchdog Friday called on North Korea to allow international inspectors to return to monitor nuclear activities there, after they were kicked out of the country in December 2002, AFP said.
A resolution adopted by consensus at a general conference in Vienna of the 137-nation watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency "calls upon" North Korea "to promptly accept comprehensive IAEA safeguards and co-operate with the agency in their full and effective implementation."
North Korea, which claims it has nuclear weapons, withdrew in January 2003 from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which sets the safeguards the IAEA is meant to enforce.
Chang-Beom Cho, South Korea's ambassador to the IAEA, told the conference that this year's resolution "delivers a clear message" to North Korea to "make a fundamental strategic decision (that) it should return to the nuclear non-proliferation regime and should accept comprehensive IAEA safeguards without further delay."
He said North Korea "must give up all its nuclear weapons and related programs including its uranium enrichment program in a thorough and transparent manner ... so that this issue does not arise again in the future."
But China expressed concern that the resolution was coming at a bad time, as the major powers are in the midst of delicate negotiations to get six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program to resume.
"We have reservations about the necessity of adopting such a resolution in the current situation," according to a statement read to the conference.