MADRID, Spain,
June 5--Armed Basque separatist group ETA said it will end its 15-month-old ceasefire at midnight on Tuesday and warned Spain’s government of new attacks “on all fronts.“
In a communique sent to Basque media, the rebels said they were calling off the truce because of “arrests, tortures and every type of persecution“ by the Socialist government.
ETA, which has been fighting for independence for the Basque territories for four decades, declared a ceasefire in March 2006 and had insisted that it still held despite killing two people with a bomb in Madrid airport in December, reported Reuters.
The government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero started exploratory peace talks in mid-2006, but broke them off at the end of the year after the airport bomb.
At the time, ETA said it had not meant to kill anyone and was only seeking concessions in peace talks.
Zapatero said the ceasefire had already been broken in December by ETA, which also called off an earlier truce in 1999.
The ETA announcement, widely anticipated by state security services, could mean a big attack is imminent, analysts said.

ANKARA, Turkey, June 5--Kurdish rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost, killing 7 soldiers in a bold attack that heightened tension at a time when Ankara has threatened military action against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
The army sent helicopter gunships and reinforcements to Tunceli province in southeastern Turkey after two guerrillas rammed a vehicle into the military post on Monday, throwing hand grenades and opening fire with automatic weapons, the governor’s office announced, AP said.
Soldiers returned fire, killing one of them--who had explosives strapped to his body, the governor’s office said. Local media said the second attacker escaped injured.
Several other guerrillas simultaneously opened fire on the outpost from a nearby forest, the governor’s office said.
The attack left seven soldiers dead and seven others injured. One of the injured was in critical condition, authorities said.
The attack came as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told European Union officials visiting Ankara that “we have every right to take measures against terrorist activities directed at us from northern Iraq.“
Turkey’s political and military leaders have been debating whether to stage an incursion into northern Iraq to try to root out Kurdish rebel bases there.

WARSAW, Poland, June 5--Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rants about US plans to install a defensive missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic recall Soviet era Cold War leader Nikita Khrushchev, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Tuesday.
The Polish premier was referring to comments made by Putin on Sunday. “If the US nuclear potential extends across the European territory, we will get new targets in Europe,“ the Russian leader said, stepping up Moscow’s Cold War rhetoric ahead of a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, reported AFP.
“It will then be up to our military experts to identify which targets will be aimed by ballistic missiles and which ones will be aimed by cruise missiles,“ Putin said in an interview with newspapers in the G8 nations.
Kaczynski said on Polish public radio Tuesday that the language used by Putin “was not used by Boris Yeltsin or Mikhail Gorbachev... or even by Brezhnev, as far as I remember. But Khrushchev certainly used the same type of language.“
Khrushchev took over as leader of the Soviet Union when Joseph Stalin died in 1953 and led the USSR at the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s.
He was forced in 1962 to back down to pressure from the United States over a plan by the Soviet Union to install missiles in Cuba.
Washington is in talks with Warsaw to install interceptor missiles in Poland as part of a missile defense system which is already deployed in the United States, Greenland and Britain.

Pakistani journalists shout slogans against restrictions on media during a demonstration in Peshawar, June 5.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 5--President Gen. Pervez Musharraf tightened controls on Pakistan’s media, the latest move against dissent in a growing political crisis over his suspension of the chief justice.
Under an emergency ordinance that takes effective immediately, Musharraf made a raft of amendments to regulations governing the electronic media, including private television channels that the general has accused of anti-government bias, AP reported.
The ordinance says authorities can seal the premises of broadcasters or distributors breaking the law, and raises possible fines for violations from $16,665 to $166,650.
The Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), which supervises radio and TV stations, can also suspend the license of an offender.
Mohsin Raza, director of news for the ARY One World channel, said suspension was a serious threat because it would disrupt vital advertising revenue.
Musharraf had fostered unprecedented media freedom since he seized power in a 1999 coup. However, he has grown exasperated with extensive coverage of the crisis triggered by his March 9 ouster of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. The turnaround has been accompanied by a spate of threats and beatings against prominent journalists for which authorities have denied responsibility.
Government officials have accused TV stations of sensationalizing the crisis in talk shows and with live coverage of rallies around the country attended by Chaudhry. The rallies have drawn large crowds of lawyers and opposition activists calling for Musharraf to step down or at least give up his role as army chief before he seeks another five-year term as president later this year.
Analysts and opposition parties claim Musharraf wanted to sideline the independent-minded Chaudhry, fearing he would pose legal challenges of the president’s quest for a new term. The government, however, has denied any political motive and Musharraf says he suspended the chief justice after receiving evidence he had abused his office.

LONDON, June 5--Princess Diana’s sons William and Harry appealed Tuesday to a British broadcaster not to air photos taken after her fatal 1997 car crash, terming it a “gross disrespect“ to her memory.
But Channel Four, which plans to air a documentary “Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel“ on Wednesday, immediately said it was going ahead with the broadcast.
AFP quoted Royal officials as saying that in a statement that they had written to Channel 4 asking them on behalf of the princes not to broadcast pictures taken after the crash on the night of August 31, 1997 in a Paris underpass.
“The princes reluctantly feel that they have been left no choice but to make it clear publicly that they believe the broadcast of these photographs to be wholly inappropriate, deeply distressing to them and to the relatives of the others who died that night, and a gross disrespect to their mother’s memory,“ said a statement by Clarence House, Prince Charles’ official residence.
Officials said their private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, had asked for a response from Channel 4 but had not received one.
As a result, they had made their views public.
They also took the unusual step of publishing Lowther-Pinkerton’s letter to Channel 4, which has gained a reputation for airing edgy programmes that divide public opinion.

Mahmud Abbas

RAMALLAH,
Occupied Palestine, June 5--Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Tuesday that creating a Palestinian state would wipe out the memory of the Arab defeat to Israel in 1967, in a speech marking 40 years since the war.
Palestinians are holding demonstrations to protest at the continued occupation of Arab land captured by Israel in the six-day war of June 1967, AFP said.
“June 1967 went down in the Middle East and world history as a massive defeat inflicted by Israel on the Arabs,“ the Palestinian president declared in a televised speech.
“Despite all the difficulties, however, our revolt was equal to this defeat, the memory of which we hope will be erased by ending the occupation of Arab and Palestinian territory and by establishing our independent state.“
Abbas said he still nurtured hope of seeing an independent Palestinian state despite current stalemate in the peace process.
In 1967, Israel captured the West Bank and east Beit-ul-Moqaddas from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula from Egypt--an area more than three times bigger than the Occupied Palestine at the time.
“Our people and our nation paid a very high price for this heavy defeat,“ said Abbas, calling the war a “black date“.
“We can say in total confidence that we have overcome defeat through revolt and therefore we are in the process of moving decisively towards our state, an objective that we consider close.“
He condemned recent fighting between sympathizers of his secular party Fatah and Hamas, in which around 150 Palestinians have been killed in various outbreaks of violence since mid-December.
The factional clashes have left the Palestinians “on the verge of a civil war“ and “tarnished our image,“ Abbas said.
Abbas said he was working towards an Israeli-Palestinian truce and again criticized “totally futile“ rocket attacks on Israel, which he said “give the Israeli army a pretext to launch attacks in the Gaza Strip“.

BANGKOK, Thailand, June 5--Thailand’s interim government Tuesday lifted a ban on political party activities that had been imposed last September when the military staged a coup d’etat to oust an elected government.
Government Spokesman Yongyuth Maiyalarb said the action, which will allow parties to prepare for a general election tentatively scheduled for December, was approved at Tuesday’s weekly Cabinet meeting.
Parties had been unable to hold public meetings and do organizing, AP said.
The lifting of the ban, effective immediately, came six days after a court ordered the dissolution of the Thai Rak Thai Party of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The Constitutional Tribunal also barred more than 100 of Thai Rak Thai’s top leaders from public office for five years for electoral law violations in connection with a general election held in April last year.
The country’s second biggest party, the Democrat Party, also faced charges but was exonerated.
All political parties had been lobbying strongly for several months for the lifting of the ban on their activities, arguing that it was necessary to help the restoration of democracy.
Last week’s court ruling raised the prospect that the next election would be seen as unfair and could cause divisiveness that might lead to violence.