Thai police charged Eli Cohen with killing his wife, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of death by lethal injection, October 5. (Reuters File Photo)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 4--A total of 134 countries have given up capital punishment, 10 more than had done so at the start of 2003, a campaigner against capital punishment reported on Friday.
Of the total, 81 have abolished the death penalty completely, 14 have abolished it for ordinary crimes, one-Russia--has pledged to abolish it, and six are observing moratoriums, Reuters quoted the Rome-based organization Hands Off Cain as saying.
Another 32 countries allow capital punishment but have in effect abolished it by not carrying out an execution for at least the past 10 years, the group said.
Since the start of 2003, Benin, Ghana, Malawi and Morocco had in effect abolished the practice by not executing anyone for at least 10 years while Kazakhstan and Tajikistan had put in place a legal moratorium on the practice, it said.
Another four countries--Bhutan, Samoa, Bosnia and Armenia--either abolished the death penalty or tightened an existing partial ban since the start of last year, the group reported at a presentation at UN headquarters.
In all, 62 countries retain the death penalty and in 2003 put to death at least 5,523 individuals, the group said.
One country alone, China, executed at least 5,000 people last year and Iraq had executed at least 113 people by April 9, 2003, when the US-led occupation suspended the death penalty, it said.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 4--The UN Correspondents Association chose the Wall Street Journal, independent filmmaker Theodore Folke and the British Broadcasting Corporation for its top journalism prizes on Friday, Reuters reported.
Each of the UNCA's first prize winners, for print journalism, broadcast and humanitarian reporting, received $10,000 at a black tie dinner.
The Wall Street Journal team won for a series on UN activities around the world written by Robert Block, Alix Freedman, Carla Anne Robbins, Jess Bravin, Steve Stecklow.
The funds for the print journalism award came from the Boston Globe and UNCA in honor of Elizabeth Neuffer, the UN correspondent for the Globe killed in Iraq in May 2003.
Second prize in this category was a $1,000 award given to Bivan Saluseki of The Sunday Post of Zambia for his feature on life in a UN camp for Congolese refugees.
Folke, an independent filmmaker for the US-based Samba Project, received the gold medal for broadcasting for his film on East Timor, the former Portuguese colony that the United Nations ushered to independence from Indonesia.
The award is in honor of Ricardo Ortega, the Spanish journalist killed as he covered street protests in Haiti last March. His former employer, the Spanish TV station Antena 3, sponsored the $10,000 award.
Tied for second place was Kristin McHugh of KQED Public Radio and The Stanley Foundation, for a radio documentary, called UNder Fire, on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The other winner was Hidetoshi Fujisawa of Japan's NHK TV for his feature on "Rebuilding Iraq: The Challenge of the United Nations."
The UN Foundation, started by media magnate Ted Turner, gave $10,000 for reporting on humanitarian and developmental affairs.

SANTIAGO, Chile, Dec. 4--A score of former political Chilean prisoners who say they were tortured under Augusto Pinochet's regime on Friday accused the former dictator and his interior minister, AFP quoted their lawyers as saying.
Charges were filed at a Santiago court of appeals five days after publication of a report on tortures under Pinochet's military rule, which lasted from 1973 and 1990.
A commission headed by Roman Catholic Bishop Sergio Valech prepared the report from 35,000 accounts on the use of rape, electricity, burns, faked executions and other forms of torture.
Pinochet's interior minister, Sergio Fernandez, was also accused.
Meanwhile, three legislators petitioned the Supreme Court to order courts to hear torture cases.
Pinochet, 89, also faces a possible trial for his role in Operation Condor, a conspiracy of Latin American dictatorships in the 1980s to eliminate opponents and hide the bodies in other countries in the group: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Pinochet also faces an investigation into millions of dollars he deposited in Riggs Bank, based in Washington.
The dictator paid himself nearly seven million dollars during the first five years of his rule, under the heading "payments for foreign services," according to an internal defense ministry document made public by journalist Patricia Verdugo.
A decade ago, an official Commission on Truth and Reconciliation catalogued some 3,000 murders and disappearances of regime opponents from military custody who were assumed to have been murdered.
Pinochet has never stood trial. He avoided a trial in Chile in July 2002 by claiming that a "mild dementia" prevented him from adequately defending himself.

TULKARM, Occupied Palestine, Dec. 4--Israeli forces detained a senior leader of Hamas's military wing in the West Bank on Saturday during a night-time raid on his hideout, Reuters quoted witnesses as saying.
Rami Al-Tayyah, 26, identified by Israeli security sources as head of the Islamic group's armed wing in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, has been wanted by Israel since 2002.
Witnesses said Israeli forces surrounded an apartment building in Tulkarm and took Tayyah into custody. "Don't kill him, we need him alive," one resident quoted a soldier as telling his comrades.
The security sources said Tayyah had established numerous Hamas cells that carried out dozens of shooting and bomb attacks against Israelis.
Tayyah, the sources said, has evaded capture during the Palestinian uprising by hiding out among the local populace and moving from place to place disguised as a woman.
A member of the militant Islamic Jihad group and the owner of the apartment where Tayyah was hiding were also taken into custody in the raid. Troops found two automatic rifles, a pistol and ammunition at the hideout, the security sources said.
On Friday, a Hamas leader said the group could accept creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and a long-term truce with Israel, signaling a possible new overture to end hostilities.
Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, has made such offers before, but this was the first time since the Nov. 11 death of Yasser Arafat and reflects a softening of the Islamic group's tone before a Palestinian election next month.

Vladimir Putin

NEW DELHI, India, Dec. 4--President Vladimir Putin earned a thumbs-down from India's media on Saturday after failing to back veto rights for any new permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, AFP reported.
"Putin vetoes UN veto for India" said the Times of India in a headline.
"Putin in one pithy paragraph, poured cold water on India's hopes of making it as a card-carrying member of a reformed UN Security Council," said the leading daily.
"UN seat yes, veto no" the Hindustan Times splashed.
"The Russian president made it clear that Moscow was not in favor of having more members of the exclusive veto club."
The broadsheet noted that "Putin's remarks came after Singh had thanked him for Russia's support to India's UNSC (UN Security Council) membership."
Clearly wounded, the southern regional newspaper Deccan Herald headlined: "Putin vetoes India's ambition".
The Russian strongman, on a three-day trip to India, did describe the world's biggest democracy as a top candidate for a permanent seat in an enlarged security council.
"Speaking about the enlargement from the point of view of geographical representation, India is number one on the list," Putin said.
But he attached a major rider.
"It would be unacceptable to erode the most effective tools of the UN Security Council," he said, warning extending the veto could see the body "lose its role and turn into a self-interest club--a new League of Nations."
The sole Indian on a 16-member panel set up by the world body to look at expanding the permanent membership dismissed thoughts that no veto would lead to second-class status.
"We may not get the veto but that doesn't make it second class," military analyst and retired general Satish Nambiar said in Saturday's Indian Express.

Hamid Karzai

KABUL, Afghanistan,
Dec. 4--A leading rights group urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday to sideline warlords implicated in rights abuses and strengthen the rule of law when he announces a new cabinet after being sworn in next week ,Reuters reported.
Human Rights Watch also urged Karzai, elected for a five-year term in Afghanistan's first free elections on Oct. 9, to be more forceful in seeking greater assistance from the United States and NATO to improve security ahead of April parliamentary elections.
In an open letter, the New York-based group further called on Karzai to take up the issue of US military abuses in the battle against Islamic militants and to take stronger action to promote women's rights.
Karzai, interim president since US-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001, is to be inaugurated on Tuesday in Kabul.
The government says he is expected to announce his new cabinet within a week of the inauguration, which is to be attended by Vice President Dick Cheney, the most senior US official to visit Afghanistan since the Taliban's overthrow.
"This is President Karzai's big chance," Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch's executive director for Asia, said in a statement.
"He has a popular mandate from the Afghan people. He should use it to end impunity and warlord rule, now and forever."
The rights group praised Karzai's efforts to sideline warlords in his previous administration but said there was an urgent need for him to create a commission to vet all senior government posts and exclude those guilty of rights abuses.

NIAMEY, Nigeria,
Dec. 4--Voters in Niger went to the polls Saturday in the second round of a presidential election in which incumbent leader Mamadou Tandja was predicted to defeat Socialist Mahamadou Issoufou to win a second term, AFP reported.
An estimated five million people are eligible to vote for president and for 852 candidates competing for 113 seats in the national assembly.
Tandja, a 66-year-old former army colonel, is heavily favored to win a new term, having secured the backing of four of his opponents after the first round.
Hundreds of national and international observers are monitoring the voting, which is taking place at 14,000 polling stations and is scheduled to end at 7.00 p.m..
The first round of voting took place November 16 without incident.
Education and jobs creation remain major concerns for voters, as just one-third of Niger's young children are in primary school and unemployment is mushrooming. Sidelined in the 1980s by a slump in the price of uranium, of which it is the world's third producer, Niger is banking on oil exploration to help lift its economy and pay off its debt, estimated at 1.8 billion dollars by the World Bank in 2003.

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dec. 3--Thousands of civilians have fled their homes after clashes in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said on Friday, but it was unclear who was behind the violence, Reuters reported.
The United States expressed concern about the situation in eastern Congo, particularly reports of Rwandan troops operating in the area, and said it would press all sides to abide by peace agreements.
Diplomats in the Great Lakes region said Rwandan troops pushed briefly into the vast Central African country early this week to hunt down Hutu rebels, some of whom took part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
"Instability in the area means we don't have an exact number but one (non-governmental organization) estimates 46,000 people are hiding in the forests of Pinga and Walikale," Jahal de Meritens, head of the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Congo (OCHA), said in a statement.
He told reporters it was very hard to tell which groups were involved in the clashes, but said they appeared to involve the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels.
"The fighting is between FDLR and a very organized, disciplined and well-equipped contingent, meaning these are the 8th military region (of Congo's army) or the Rwandan army. But Rwanda says it is not there and we have not seen them," he said.