CAIRO, Egypt,
Feb. 26--A court has sentenced a policeman to six months’ in prison after convicting him of insubordination for refusing to guard the Israeli embassy, a court official said Sunday.
Mohammed Khalaf Hasan, 38, was imprisoned after the Cairo Military Court for Police affairs pronounced its verdict this morning, accusing Hasan of noncompliance with orders by his commander, the court official said speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to give statements to the media, AFP said.
Hasan was ordered to guard the Israeli embassy in early February, but he refused take the assignment.
The police officer, who is from the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, went on a hunger strike right after he was ordered to guard the embassy.
Although Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, many Arabs and Egyptians view Israel as an enemy. Fighting between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerrillas last summer has heightened anti-Israeli sentiment in the region.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (r) shakes hands with US Vice President Dick Cheney prior to their meeting in Islamabad, Feb. 26.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 26--US Vice President Dick Cheney paid a surprise visit Monday to Pakistan amid growing concern about President Pervez Musharraf’s efforts to take on Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists.
Pakistan’s military ruler has been seen as a close US ally in the “war on terror,“ but Washington recently announced there were new Al-Qaeda training camps on Pakistani soil and indicated it wants Musharraf to do more, AFP said.
There is also concern about a threatened spring offensive from the resurgent Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, where the government has repeatedly said Pakistan is not doing enough to stop the cross-border movement of militants.
Cheney held talks with Musharraf for more than an hour at the presidential palace in Islamabad, a senior Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“Cheney met the president and they discussed Afghanistan and also bilateral matters,“ the official said.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was also in Pakistan, just days after Britain said it would bolster its 5,600-strong force in Afghanistan by sending extra troops to the volatile south.
Cheney’s trip came as the New York Times quoted senior US officials saying Musharraf would get an “unusually tough message“ that US aid to Pakistan could be cut unless Al-Qaeda is hunted down more aggressively.
The report said that the new Democratic majority in the US Congress was looking at cutting aid and military assistance to Pakistan, the fifth-largest recipient of US foreign aid, unless it does more to take on Al-Qaeda.
Musharraf’s nation was one of only a handful to recognize the Taliban, Islamic militants who took power in Afghanistan in the wars after Soviet occupation, as the country’s legitimate government before the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Khaled Meshaal

MOSCOW, Feb. 26--Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal arrived in Moscow on Monday for talks aimed at lobbying Russia to push for an end to a Western aid embargo on the Palestinian government.
“Our goal is to encourage the international community to start cooperation with the Palestinian government and pressurize Israel to recognize the Palestinian state’s right to exist,“ RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying.
“We value Russia’s position toward lifting the blockade from which the Palestinian people suffer. We also value Russia’s special position in the issues of the Middle East settlement.“
Russia has taken a softer line on the Islamist Hamas than the United States and the European Union, which along with the United Nations make up the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators, reported Reuters.
“The Quartet should radically review its stance and send its demands to Israel, rather than to the Palestinians,“ Meshaal said.
The West is boycotting Hamas and the government it formed after an election victory last year, demanding it recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts interim peace deals.
Earlier this month, Hamas and the rival Fatah faction led by moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to form a unity government hoping to end the international boycott and factional fighting.
But the Quartet failed to work out a common stand on the unity government at a meeting last week. Russia wants the Quartet to back the coalition deal, while the Western governments have adopted a wait-and-see approach.
He is to hold meetings in the Russian foreign ministry, but there were no other details available. It was unclear if he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is believed he will be in Moscow for at least two days.

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Feb. 26--Sudan on Monday rejected the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court in pressing charges over the conflict in Darfur, still ravaged by war and famine four years after the violence erupted.
Last week the ICC--which is authorized to judge war crimes or crimes against humanity if national jurisdiction lacks the ability to do so--announced that its prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will present evidence on Tuesday of alleged war crimes committed in Darfur, AFP wrote.
The judges will then decide whether to open an inquiry against the suspects with the aim of eventually issuing international arrest warrants.
But Sudan has rejected the ICC’s authority, arguing that the country’s judiciary is perfectly capable of trying its own criminals.
“The position of Sudan is that this court has no jurisdiction when it comes to trying Sudanese,“ Minister of Justice Mohammed Ali Al-Mardhi was quoted by the Akhbar Al-Yom as saying.
This applies to Sudanese officials, members of the security forces as well as the rebel groups in the troubled western Sudanese region, Mardhi said.
Sudan’s judiciary is “sufficiently independent and impartial“ and has the “will and capacity to try all persons responsible for crimes in Darfur,“ he said.
Mardhi is currently in Darfur conducting an inquiry into violations in the region, but Sudanese authorities insist his visit is not related to the ICC report.
Most experts say the war in Darfur, an arid desert region the size of France, officially started on February 26, 2003 when rebels attacked a garrison in North Darfur. Government forces backed by Janjaweed militia responded with a fierce scorched-earth campaign.
The human cost of what some observers describe as the first genocide of the 21st century has been huge. At least 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced according to the United Nations, though some sources say figures are much higher.

TOKYO, Feb. 26--A group of South Koreans filed a lawsuit Monday against a Tokyo war shrine criticized for glorifying Japan’s militaristic past, demanding it remove relatives’ names from the list of war dead honored there.
The suit, filed at the Tokyo District Court, is the first ever filed by South Koreans against Yasukuni Shrine, their Japanese supporter Naoyoshi Yamamoto said Monday.
According to AP, the 11 plaintiffs, including a former soldier and 10 others whose fathers were forced into the Japanese military during World War II, said their names have been enshrined against their will and want them removed.
Four of the plaintiffs visited the shrine earlier Monday to make the demands directly before filing the suit at the court, but were not allowed to enter a shrine building to meet the priests, Yamamoto said.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are also demanding 1 yen (less than US$1; -0.76) each in compensation and a public apology for enshrining their relatives against their will.
The Yasukuni Shrine honors Japan’s 2.5 million war dead, including seven executed Class-A war criminals and an estimated 21,000 Koreans.
The shrine has often been a source of friction between Japan and South Korea and China, which suffered Japanese aggression and see the shrine as the symbol of Tokyo’s militaristic past.
South Korea, which still harbors bitter memories of Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, has strongly protested visits to the shrine by Japanese leaders.
In May 2006, a Japanese court rejected demands by a group of more than 400 South Korean plaintiffs that the Japanese government remove their relatives’ names from the shrine, saying the government was not responsible for those enshrined at Yasukuni. The plaintiffs appealed the case, which is currently pending at a higher court.

KATMANDU, Nepal, Feb. 26--Protesters shut down roads and rail lines in southern Nepal on Monday to demand more rights and political power, stranding thousands of passengers, AP quoted officials as saying.
No traffic crossed the busiest trading point between Nepal and neighboring India, the border town of Birgunj, because of the strike, said Narendra Raj Poudel, chief government administrator in the Parsa district.
Protests spearheaded by the Tarai People’s Rights Forum have left at least 21 people dead, mostly demonstrators, since January.
The group says the mountainous north has dominated and marginalized the flat south, and are demanding more autonomy as well as greater representation in the national legislature and government as the nation rebuilds its institutions after a decade of civil war.
The group suspended the protests on Feb. 8 after the government said it had accepted their key demands, but resumed them again Monday, threatening to start a general strike next week.
The protesters are also seeking the resignation of Home Minister Krishna Sitaula, who they blame for the deaths of protesters. They want the government to form a high-level commission to investigate the killings.
Landlocked Nepal has to import all oil products and much of its consumer goods from India, and an earlier blockade by the group caused shortages and shut down most traffic in the capital.
The airports in the south were open Monday, but most Nepalese cannot afford to fly.