US Secretary of State Colin Powell (c), flanked by Sudan's Vice President Ali Osman Taha (l) and the country's main rebel leader John Garang before a press conference in Nairobi, Jan. 8. (AFP Photo)

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan. 9--Sudan's government and southern rebels signed a comprehensive peace deal on Sunday ending Africa's longest-running civil war, Reuters quoted witnesses as saying.
Sudan's First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and John Garang, chairman of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), signed the accord at a ceremony in Kenya's capital Nairobi, ending a 21-year-old old conflict in the south that has killed an estimated two million people mainly through famine and disease.
The accord does not cover a separate conflict in the western Darfur area of Africa's largest country, where almost two years of fighting has created what the United Nations says is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
In front of 12 African heads of state or government and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Garang and Taha put their names to a series of protocols signed by junior colleagues in two years of talks that together constitute an overall accord including a permanent ceasefire.
Under the agreement the ruling National Congress party and the SPLM will form a coalition government, decentralize power, share oil revenues and integrate the military. At the end of a six-year interim period, the south can vote for secession.
Sudan faces conflict on many fronts--mainly in the south where rebels have been fighting the government since 1983, when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic law on the entire country.
But violence is also ravaging Darfur, where a rebellion began in February 2003 after years of tribal conflict over scarce resources. The rebels accused the government of neglect and of using Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages.
Khartoum acknowledges arming some militias to fight rebels but denies any links to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws.
Tens of thousands have already been killed in the Darfur war and nearly two million forced to flee their homes.

Gordon Brown // Tony Blair

LONDON, Jan. 9--A new opinion poll offered decidedly mixed news for British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday: while he looks set to win the next election, his finance minister and arch rival Gordon Brown is now a more popular choice as premier, AFP reported.
Twenty-seven percent of British people want Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to become prime minister, one percent more than would like Blair to stay in the job, a poll for the News of the World newspaper showed.
The figures will be sweet reading for backers of Brown following a week of reportedly high tensions between Blair and Brown, the two most powerful men in government, who both have their own unofficial factions within the ruling Labour party.
While he has been a loyal--and successful--chancellor since Blair took power in 1997, insiders claim Brown is growing
increasingly impatient at the prime minister's determination to stay on in the top job.
Brown has long been seen as Labour's heir apparent, but late last year, Blair dismayed the finance minister's backers by announcing that he planned to serve a third full term in office, if Labour were re-elected.
In better news for Blair, the new opinion poll showed that Labour remains well on course to win the next election, which is widely expected to be held in May.
The Sunday newspaper's survey of 1,030 people put Labour on 38 percent support, well above the 31 percent for the main opposition Conservative Party, with the Liberal Democrats on 21 percent.
And while Brown beat Blair as preferred prime minister, Conservative leader Michael Howard was lagging on just 14 percent, below even the 15 percent for Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy.
The simmering tensions between Blair and Brown came to the surface on Thursday when they held simultaneous major public appearances.
Brown made a long-planned speech on global aid in Edinburgh, while his boss held a hastily-arranged press conference in London, an event some charged was aimed at stealing Brown's thunder.

GILGIT, Pakistan, Jan. 9--Violence spread to two remote northern Pakistan towns on Sunday, a day after 14 people were killed in violence that erupted following an attack on a minority Shi'ite Muslim leader, Reuters quoted officials as saying.
Hundreds of angry youth burnt tires and blocked roads in the northern mountain town of Skardu, though there were no reports of any casualties, while the government also beefed up security in another town, Karimabad, where enraged crowds attacked local government offices late last night.
The violence was sparked following an attack on religious leader Ziauddin Moosavi in Gilgit, the main town in the mountainous region known as Northern Areas.
Skardu is the last major town on the way to K-2, the world's second-highest mountain, while Karimabad is the capital of scenic Hunza valley on the Karakorum Highway that goes up to China.
Moosavi was traveling in his car to a mosque in the center of Gilgit, 240 km north of the capital Islamabad, when unidentified gunmen opened fire, critically injuring Moosavi and his three guards.
Two of the guards later died.
Muhammad Yaqub at the government hospital in Gilgit said the death toll had risen to 14 from 11 in the violence on Saturday, after which a curfew was imposed in the town and the army was called in to control the mob.
The curfew was still in place on Sunday and residents said soldiers were patrolling the streets on vehicles with machineguns mounted on the top.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack on Moosavi but police suspected it was a sectarian incident.
Attacks by militants of Pakistan's majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite Muslim communities have killed hundreds of people over the years.
Shi'ites account for 15 percent of Pakistan's 150 million population.

SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 9--US President George W. Bush must drop his ÔhostileÕ policy towards North Korea during his second term in order to revive six-way nuclear talks, AFP quoted Pyongyang as saying in a statement monitored here Sunday.
A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said in the statement late Saturday that Washington should "opt for co-existence" with Pyongyang.
The North Korean call came as Bush is due to be sworn in for a second four-year term on January 20 with little progress made in his efforts to check Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
"We will closely follow what a Korea policy the second term Bush administration will shape and react to it," said the foreign ministry statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"The prospect of settling the nuclear issue between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US will entirely depend on the latter's attitude."
North Korea has been under growing pressure to return to the stalled six-nation negotiations which also include South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
North Korea boycotted a fourth round scheduled for Beijing in September, citing what it called a hostile US policy, after three rounds of talks.
The North's statement repeated that Washington should be blamed for the failures of previous talks due to its tough negotiation stance and a series of measures--including US military build-up in South Korea and a US human rights act --against Pyongyang.
"If the US truly wishes a negotiated settlement of the nuclear issue, it should rebuild the groundwork of the talks unilaterally destroyed by it and drop in practice its hostile policy aimed to 'bring down the system' in the DPRK and opt for co-existence with it, though belatedly," it said.
"This is the key to settling the issue."
Tensions between North Korea and the United States have increased since a stand-off erupted in October 2002 over US accusations that Pyongyang had run a secret uranium-based nuclear weapons program.
North Korea has denied the US claims, but fired up a separate, mothballed plutonium-based nuclear program.

KUWAIT CITY, Jan. 9--Kuwait's interior minister Sunday defended the detention of Al-Arabiya's correspondent over a report that was officially denied while rights activists criticized the action taken by the authorities, AFP reported.
"We will not hesitate to take any action against all those who harm Kuwait's security and stability," Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah said in comments reported by local newspapers.
"He (the correspondent) aired baseless reports about the security of Kuwait," said the minister.
Adel Al-Eidan, a Kuwaiti, was released on bail Saturday after being detained for four days for reporting on an alleged shootout between security forces and gunmen in a suburb south of the capital.
Police found a number of hand grenades, arms and ammunition in the gunmen's car which had suspiciously circled state security headquarters in the area before the shooting erupted, the correspondent said.
Authorities described the report as "totally baseless."
Two other suspects were also released on bail.
"Regardless of whether the report was true or not, security authorities had no right to detain the correspondent," Islamist MP Walid Al-Tabtabai, who heads parliament's human rights committee, said in a statement.
"In doing so, the security agency abused its powers and attempted to terrify workers in the media... which constitutes a breach of the Kuwaiti constitution," he said.
Former minister and liberal MP Ahmad Al-Rubei, writing in Al-Qabas, said that if the "correspondent has committed a mistake, the Kuwaiti security agencies made a blunder."
Eidan's lawyer, Nawaf Al-Mutairi, said Saturday that his client had "been charged with reporting false news that undermines the country's position internally and abroad."

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jan. 9--Hundreds of people protested in Sri Lanka's Tamil-majority north Sunday after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed to a government request not to visit tsunami-stricken areas under rebel control, AP reported.
Annan said he hoped it would not strain relations between the United Nations and the rebel group.
"I'm hoping to come back and be able to visit all areas of the country, not only those repaired, but also to celebrate peace. The UN is not here to take sides," he said.
"We are here to help all people in the country. This is a tragedy that has affected all people, that has transcended divisions that wrack your country," Annan said at a press conference ahead of his meeting with the nation's president.
The long-running tensions between the Colombo government and Tamil Tiger rebels appear to have sharpened in the wake of the tsunami disaster, which killed more than 30,000 people in Sri Lanka.
The Tigers, who have fought a 20-year war for Tamil independence from the Sinhalese-dominated south, invited Annan to tour the northern province. But government officials said they could not guarantee the UN chief's safety.
Annan's itinerary was planned in consultation with UN agencies in Colombo, "taking into account the security, programming and time consideration involved," the government said in a statement.
The government offered access and air transport to any member of Annan's delegation to visit tsunami-affected areas including northern Mullaitivu, under rebel control, the statement said. It didn't mention if that same access was offered to the UN chief.
About 400 protesters gathered peacefully opposite the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' office, demanding that Annan visit the northern region to inspect damage caused by the tsunami.

SRINAGAR, India, Jan. 9--Two Indian army soldiers and a wanted commander of a major Islamic group were killed in two overnight clashes in insurgency-hit Kashmir, AFP quoted police as saying Sunday.
A gun battle near the southern town of Shopian, 50 kilometers south of the summer capital Srinagar, left the two Indian soldiers dead, a police spokesman said.
Further south in Poonch district, Indian troops shot dead a commander of pro-Pakistan rebel group Hizbul Mujahedin, the spokesman said.
He identified the dead man as Khalid Chitrali, alias Abu Usman. "Khalid was one of the most wanted militants in Poonch," he said.
Hizbul is the dominant and oldest pro-Pakistan rebel group fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir.
Each of the nuclear-rivals hold part of Kashmir and both New Delhi and Islamabad claim it in full.
The revolt inside Indian Kashmir has left more than 40,000 people dead by official count. Separatists put the toll between 80,000 and 100,000.
Violence continues in the Himalayan state despite a tentative peace process between India and Pakistan who have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir.
Seven people died in a two-day battle between Islamic militants and security forces at a federal tax office in Srinagar on Friday and Saturday.