CARACAS, Venezuela, May 19--Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez demanded Pope Benedict apologize to Indians in Latin America for saying this month in Brazil that the Roman Catholic Church purified them.
Chavez, who regularly clashes with the Catholic Church in Venezuela but had not directly criticized the Pope before, accused the Pontiff on Friday of ignoring the “holocaust“ that followed Christopher Columbus’s 1492 landing in the Americas, Reuters reported.
“With all due respect your Holiness, apologize because there was a real genocide here and, if we were to deny it, we would be denying our very selves,“ Chavez said at an event on freedom of expression.
In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Venezuela’s neighbor Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Indian leaders in the region were outraged by the comments.
Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.
Chavez, who has expanded the rights of indigenous peoples from the Amazon rainforest to the Caribbean, said he felt he was Indian because Venezuelans are a mix of the European race and indigenous peoples.
Chavez spoke only days after Venezuelan media interpreted other comments from the Pope as singling out Chavez as a danger to Latin America when he warned of autocrats in the region.
Chavez, who regularly criticizes world figures such as U.S. President George W. Bush, describes himself as Christian, grew up expecting to become a priest and says his socialist policies have roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Jimmy Carter

LONDON, May 19--Britain’s support for the war in Iraq was a “major tragedy“ for the world, former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday as he criticized Tony Blair’s unwavering support for President Bush.
Asked how he would judge Blair’s support of Bush, a Republican, the former Democratic president said: “Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient.“
“And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world,“ Carter told British Broadcasting Corp. radio, AP quoted.
Blair was in Baghdad Saturday morning for what will be his last trip to Iraq as British prime minister. Last week, Blair announced that he would step down June 27, making way for treasury chief Gordon Brown.
The war in Iraq has been the defining foreign policy issue of Blair’s premiership, and the decision to join the US-led invasion was an unpopular one at home. So far, nearly 150 British service personnel have died in Iraq.
Carter said Britain’s support made it more difficult for critics of the war, and that things could have been different if Britain spoke out against the 2003 invasion.
“I can’t say it would have made a definitive difference, but it would certainly have assuaged the problems that arose lately,“ said Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981.
It’s not the first time Carter has criticized Britain. Last year, he said he was disappointed with “the apparent subservience“ of the British government to Washington on issues such as Iraq and last summer’s Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 19--President Gen. Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that Islamic militancy was increasing across Pakistan and said tough measures were needed to counter it, as religious students from a pro-Taliban mosque abducted four police officers.
Musharraf made his remarks in an interview aired late Friday by the private Aaj television channel after four plainclothes officers were captured while patrolling in the capital, Islamabad, near the Lal Masjid mosque--notorious for launching its own anti-vice campaign, AP reported.
The president said that militancy in Pakistan was increasing, and “we need to strongly counter it.“ Musharraf did not elaborate.
His comments came as Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a cleric at Lal Masjid, said his students detained the officers because they were standing outside a seminary linked to the mosque despite an agreement with authorities that police would not be deployed there.
He said the abductions were in retaliation for intelligence agents detaining eight or nine of its students in the past two weeks. However, he said the police would be freed later Saturday because they were not intelligence agents.
Area police official Mohammed Dilshad confirmed the abductions, saying negotiations with Lal Masjid were under way, and the issue would hopefully be resolved “very soon.“
Critics have accused Musharraf’s government of appeasing the religious vigilantes--despite concerns that pro-Taliban hard-liners, intent on enforcing a stringent version of Islamic law or Shariah, are gaining sway in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, dozens of gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying eight government officials and kidnapped them in a troubled northwestern tribal region of Pakistan, officials said Saturday.
The officials, including five women, were abducted late Friday when they were going to the North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan, said Arbab Mohammed Arif Khan, secretary for law and order in Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal regions.
“We are making efforts for their early recovery,“ said Khan, who refused to speculate who might have kidnapped the officials.
However, an area intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his job, said the officials were believed to have been abducted by militants and authorities were trying to secure their release with help from tribal elders.

Romanian President Traian Basescu gestures as he cast his ballot at a polling station in Bucharest, May 19.

BUCHAREST, Romania, May 19--Romanians were voting Saturday on whether to impeach President Traian Basescu who has been accused of violating the constitution but remains popular among the public.
Polls have suggested Basescu, 55, will win the vote, reinforcing his legitimacy as president and head of a centre-right coalition, AFP reported.
But some observers say the country’s politics will remain in disarray some five months after Romania joined the European Union.
Voters are being asked to reply “yes“ or “no“ to the question “Do you agree with Traian Basescu being dismissed?“
If he has to go, new presidential elections will be organized within three months.
“Go vote,“ the Romania Libera newspaper exhorted the country’s 18.2 million registered voters, while the Evenimentul Zilei daily said “what’s at stake is not whether Basescu wins but with what percentage“.
Romania’s last referendum, on the constitution, attracted just 55 percent of Romanian voters.
Parliament suspended Basescu last month, accusing him of “controlling through those close to him all state institutions, of interfering in the law and protecting the interests of the mafia in the Romanian economy.“
He remains popular due to his frank comments and what some see as his commitment to rooting out corruption.
Basescu has campaigned in Romania, and in Spain, aware of the importance of the estimated two million Romanians living abroad.
At the same time, Basescu’s opponents, including liberal Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu, appear to have lost ground in polls.
“Romanian society has arrived at a point where such a debate has been necessary to better define the balance of power between the president, the government and parliament,“ said political scientist Iosif Boda.
Another analyst said the conflict between Basescu and parliament can only be resolved through new parliamentary elections.

Policemen stand guard at the site of a bomb blast at Mecca Masjid, the main mosque in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, May 19.

Hyderabad, Indai, May 19--Police sought clues on Saturday to a “sophisticated“ blast at a historic mosque that killed 10 people and triggered clashes which left four dead in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.
The powerful explosion, which wounded 17, occurred Friday afternoon as thousands of worshippers gathered at the 17th-century Mecca Mosque to offer prayers, AFP reported.
The blast at Hyderabad’s biggest mosque was followed by protests in which police opened fire to subdue rioters angered by the attack staged on the Muslim holy day.
“The deaths are 14. Ten in the blast and four in the (police) firing,“ said city police commissioner Balwinder Singh. Officials said 32 had been injured in the protests.
Hyderabad’s Muslim quarters were paralyzed by a strike on Saturday called to protest against the blast as well as the police’s handling of the clashes.
Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil arrived on Saturday to assess the situation in Hyderabad, one of the country’s most developed cities and a software hub.
Two bombs defused at the mosque after the initial explosion had provided some clues, investigators said.
As many as 10,000 worshippers were at the mosque at the time of the blast, reports said, and 1,000 people were in the area where the device was placed.
Investigators also recovered a SIM card from one of the phones, the Press Trust of India news agency said, citing an unnamed source at the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory.
The defused bombs were attached to a Nokia mobile and we have began tracing the person with the help of the SIM card.
The protest strike had been called by the area’s main Muslim party, the Majlis-Ittehadul Muslimeen (United Muslim Party).
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast which came nine months after the bombing of a mosque in Malegaon in western India that killed 31 people and wounded 297.
In April 2006, two explosions occurred after Friday evening prayers at the crowded 17th-century Jama Masjid in the old quarter of the capital New Delhi, wounding 14 people.
In February, 68 people also died in the firebombing of a train travelling from India to Pakistan.

TOKYO, May 19--Japan’s state and navy police raided a Japanese naval academy Saturday over an alleged leak of sensitive warship technology data shared between Japan and the United States, officials said.
The case involves US-developed technology of high-tech Aegis radar on several advanced Japanese destroyers that is also used by US warships carrying missile interceptors. It has alarmed officials as the allies accelerate their joint missile defense development amid North Korean missile and nuclear threat, AP reported.
Defense officials acknowledged the raid Saturday, but refused to provide details. “We cannot make a comment regarding investigation,“ said Navy spokesman Yutaka Fujisawa.
Investigators from Kanagawa state and Maritime Self-Defense Forces believe that computer disks containing the sensitive data were illegally copied and circulated among dozens of students and instructors at the First Service School in Etajima in western Japan, public broadcaster NHK reported Saturday.
The case surfaced in March when police found one of the disks at the home of a Japanese naval officer in Kanagawa during a separate investigation of his Chinese wife over her immigration status.
The 33-year petty officer second class was not authorized to possess the data. Police have been investigating how the disk ended up at his home and how its contents were circulated among naval students and other officers, Kyodo News agency said.
The raid over the alleged violation of the 1954 law concerning protection of secrets under bilateral security pact is reportedly the first at a Japanese naval academy

MOSCOW, May 19--More than a half-dozen journalists with the Russian News Service, which produces reports that reach millions of radio listeners, resigned to protest the new pro-Kremlin management’s policy that at least 50 percent of coverage must be positive, according to former correspondents.
The company that owns the service, Russian Media Group, said Saturday that no one was available to comment on the claims, which come amid growing concern about media freedom in Russia, AP reported.
In another case highlighting the concerns, the Russian Union of Journalists is protesting an order that it vacate its offices that house state media operations, including the RIA-Novosti news agency and the Russia Today satellite television channel.
During Vladimir Putin’s presidency, major Russian media have increasingly come under state control or influence. The media arm of the state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom took control of NTV television--once noted for its criticism of the Kremlin and independent reporting on the war in Chechnya --and the newspaper Izvestia.
Analytical programs on Russia’s main TV channels are increasingly infrequent and less likely to express criticism of the Kremlin.