NEW DELHI, India, July 25--India’s Cabinet Wednesday approved a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation accord with Washington, the first in a series of approvals required before the deal can be implemented.
The deal, allowing the United States to sell atomic technology and fuel to India, still requires the nod from India’s Congress-led government’s Communist allies, AFP said.
The Communists have been bitterly critical of the deal, but their support is needed for it to clear the Indian Parliament.
The accord is aimed at helping India meet its soaring energy demands by reversing three decades of US sanctions imposed over nuclear tests carried out by India in 1974 and 1998.
The fine-print of the accord, broadly clinched during a visit to India by US president George W. Bush in March 2006, was hammered out last week in Washington during a visit by National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon.
The implementation agreement, or “123 agreement,“ is intended to capture all operational aspects of the nuclear deal, which is also aimed at galvanizing strategic ties between the world’s two biggest democracies.
Agreement on the fine-print was held up by India’s concerns of Washington suspending cooperation and demanding the return of atomic fuel in the event of India testing nuclear weapons.
India is not a signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, which is essential for the sharing of such technology.
In June, India proposed to set up a special unit to reprocess spent atomic fuel under international safeguards in a bid to allay American fears that the nuclear material and expertise given to India would not be diverted for military purposes.

MOSCOW, July 25--A Russian delegation will visit Washington July 30-31 to discuss the Russian president’s proposals for the United States on missile defense cooperation in Europe, the foreign minister said Tuesday.
“In line with the Kennebunkport agreements, we have coordinated a timetable to analyze the missile proliferation threat, and talks will take place in Washington July 30-31 as part of the first phase in joint efforts,“ Sergei Lavrov said.
At informal talks at the Bush family home in Kennebunkport early July, Vladimir Putin proposed to George W. Bush setting up a missile defense data exchange center in Moscow and Brussels, and suggested joint use of a radar being built in southern Russia, in addition to the early warning facility in Gabala in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan.
The proposals came following the US announced plans to place elements of its missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. They became one of the main points of contention in bilateral relations, bringing them to their lowest point since the Cold War, with Russia initially threatening to point its warheads at Europe.

An earthquake on July 16 created deep cracks near Tokyo Electric Power's nuclear plant in Kashiwazaki city in Niigata prefecture, 250 km north of Tokyo, July 18.

VIENNA, Austria,
July 25--The UN’s nuclear watchdog agency said Tuesday it would send a team of experts to Japan in the next few weeks to examine a nuclear power plant damaged during a deadly earthquake on July 16.
“The IAEA intends to send a team of IAEA and international experts in the coming weeks“ to examine the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant northwest of Tokyo, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement, AFP said.
“The exact timing will be decided in consultation with the Japanese authorities,“ it added.
Japan invited the IAEA on Monday to visit its largest nuclear plant in hopes of easing international concern after last week’s 6.8-magnitude earthquake caused a radiation leak.
IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei said in the statement it was important to draw lessons from this case “that might have implications for the international nuclear safety regime.“
He had earlier called for transparency and said the UN watchdog was ready to assist in an inspection.
The earthquake struck off the coast just nine kilometers (five miles) from the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, killing 10 people, destroying hundreds of homes and causing a fire at the plant that lasted for hours.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), later said radiation leaked. The company said the amount was far too small to pose a health hazard but has come under criticism for initially underreporting radiation levels.
The governor of Niigata prefecture, where the plant is located, had also called for the assistance of the IAEA, saying it would help prevent the spread of rumors that the radiation leak was more dangerous than thought.

Smoke rises from the Palestinian Nahr Al-Bared Refugee Camp near Tripoli in northern Lebanon, July 17.

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon, July 25--Lebanese troops advanced towards fortified positions of Islamist militants at a Palestinian refugee camp on Wednesday in what political sources said was the start of a final assault to root out the gunmen.
Moving in under cover of artillery and tank fire, soldiers killed at least three Fatah Al-Islam militants at Nahr Al-Bared camp in north Lebanon, raising the overall death toll from two months of fighting to at least 245, security sources said.
“This is the final phase of the military operation,“ one Lebanese political source said, adding that he expected the army to capture the whole camp by the end of this week, Reuters reported.
The source said there were about 100 people left inside the area controlled by Fatah Al-Islam--60 fighters and 40 civilians who include 24 wives of militants and 16 children.
Palestinian and UN officials had earlier put the number of civilians left in the hundreds. The Lebanese source said some 200 civilians had left the camp in recent days.
Witnesses said soldiers blasted with tanks and artillery the last pockets of the militants who have refused repeated calls to surrender. The fighting, which began on May 20, is Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
The conflict has further undermined stability in Lebanon, already crippled by a prolonged political crisis and shaken by bombings that have killed six UN peacekeepers and two anti-Syrian lawmakers in the past eight months.
The militants hit back, firing a few Katyusha rockets into areas outside the camp. The security sources said two soldiers were wounded in the clashes.
The Lebanese army’s slow push into the destroyed camp has cost the lives of 120 soldiers. More than 84 Fatah Al-Islam fighters and 41 civilians have also been killed.
The army has consistently demanded the unconditional surrender of the militants who had attacked its positions around Nahr Al-Bared on May 20, killing around 16 soldiers.
Fatah Al-Islam, which espouses Al-Qaeda’s ideology but says it has no direct links to Osama bin Laden’s network, emerged last year after breaking away from a Syrian-backed Palestinian faction. It has Lebanese, Palestinians and other Arabs, including some Iraq war veterans, in its ranks.

PANMUNJOM,
North Korea,
July 25-- North and South Korea opened a second day of high-level military talks Wednesday in hopes of finding a solution to a long-running dispute over their shared western sea border.
The two sides, led by two-star generals, ended the opening day of talks in bitter discord a day earlier at the truce village of Panmunjom on the inter-Korean border, as the North renewed its demand that the United Nations-designated border be redrawn further south, reported AP.
South Korea has rejected the North’s demand, saying that the current border-- demarcated at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War--should be respected. The border issue has been a constant source of dispute on the divided peninsula.
This week’s talks--the highest-level dialogue channel between the two militaries--are designed to follow up on agreements reached at their previous session in May, but have been overshadowed by the sea border issue.
In May, the two sides agreed to set up a joint fishing area around the contended border and to cooperate on security arrangements for joint economic projects in the area. But no progress has been made in three subsequent rounds of lower-level talks.
North Korea’s navy command has issued a series of warnings in recent months that a battle along the disputed sea border--the scene of deadly clashes in 1999 and 2002--could occur unless South Korean vessels stop entering its waters.
The waters around the border are rich fishing grounds and boats from the two Koreas routinely jostle for position during the May-June crab-catching season.
The Korean War ended in a cease-fire that has never been replaced with a peace treaty-- leaving the two sides technically at war.
The talks are set to run through Thursday.

TEL AVIV,
Occupied Palestine, July 25--More than 4,000 Israelis received German citizenship last year, marking a 50-percent increase from 2005.
According to figures published by the Israeli Federal Statistics Office this week, 4,313 Israelis received citizenship last year, an increase of over 50 percent compared to 2005, and the largest total since German records began a quarter of a century ago, QODSNA reported.
German law makes it easy for former citizens who fled the country during Nazi rule to regain their citizenship and offers the same chance to their descendants.
But few Israelis took advantage of this until recently, a shift experts attribute to rising political instability in the Middle East, opportunities within an enlarged European Union and new attitudes towards Germany of a younger Israeli generation.
Estimates show that some 300,000 Israelis may be eligible to become German citizens.
There are now an estimated 100,000 Jews in Germany compared with 600,000 before the war. At the end of World War Two, only 12,000 Jews remained.
A flood of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s led to a rebirth of Germany ’s Jewish community.