TOKYO, Sept. 16--Yasuo Fukuda, the front-runner to be Japan’s next prime minister, pledged Sunday to strengthen ties with China and said he would not visit a war shrine seen as a symbol of Tokyo’s wartime past.
In a televised, head-to-head debate with his only challenger, Fukuda also suggested taking a softer stance on North Korea and spoke of ramming through legislation to extend support for US-led operations in Afghanistan, AFP said.
Fukuda, a 71-year-old elder of the ruling Liberal Democrat Party (LDP), is favorite to beat former foreign minister Taro Aso and succeed outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who announced last week that he was stepping down.
Although the contest is officially for the LDP leadership, its majority in the lower house of parliament means whoever wins the party’s September 23 vote will become premier of the world’s second biggest economy.
“China is now aiming at a free market economy. They are making an effort,“ Fukuda said in the debate.
“We need to cooperate with them,“ he added, cementing his reputation as a foreign policy dove, particularly on Asia.
Fukuda said he had no plans to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial which is controversial because the 2.5 million Japanese war dead it honors include World War II war criminals.
“As a prime minister, I think I will have to refrain from making a visit,“ he said.
Former premier Junichiro Koizumi, whom Abe succeeded last year, infuriated China and other Asian neighbors who had suffered under Japanese occupation, notably the two Koreas, by repeatedly visiting the shrine.
Aso, for his part, criticized China for “insufficient explanation“ of its growing military spending, which he called a threat to Japan and the region.
“Their transparency (on military spending) is not good enough,“ he warned, and “makes its neighbors sense the possibility“ of military action. “In that sense, it’s a threat.“

NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept. 16--Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki was to formally launch his reelection campaign on Sunday via a live address widely trailed as announcing a new political party to replace the coalition that brought him to power in 2002.
The veteran 75-year-old politician, who leads polls to win a second term running east Africa’s largest economy in an election expected in December, was to speak at 3 p.m., Reuters reported .
“During his address, the president is expected to state the political party on whose ticket he will seek his second and final term of office as President of Kenya,“ said a statement from his State House office in Nairobi.
Until that statement, Kibaki had not even formally confirmed he was running for re-election, though it was widely assumed.
Local media and some official sources said Kibaki would announce the formation of a new political grouping, the Party of National Unity, as his vehicle for re-election.
He has been without a party since the demise last year of the National Rainbow Coalition, which gave him victory five years ago after the 24-year rule of President Daniel Arap Moi.
Although mud was tossed at Moi the day he handed over power to Kibaki, the pair have grown closer in the last two years, and Moi has now endorsed Kibaki’s run for re-election.
The official leader of the opposition, Uhuru Kenyatta, who lost against Kibaki in 2002, has also said he will support him.

Robert Mugabe

HARARE, Zimbabwe, Sept. 16--Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is consolidating his hold on power, as he ruthlessly tackles his arch-critics ahead of 2008 polls in which he is a candidate, analysts said.
His latest victim is former Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, one of his strongest critics, who resigned on Tuesday from his post in the aftermath of an alleged adultery scandal, reported AFP.
State-run Herald newspaper had published in July some compromising pictures which it said depicted the then cleric having sex with another man’s wife.
Ncube, 60, who has been head of the Bulawayo Diocese since 1998, said his resignation was intended to save the Church from further attacks and enable him to challenge the adultery charge in court in his private capacity.
“What they did to Ncube was to send a warning to all critics“, said Bill Saidi, a political commentator and journalist. “The whole plan was absolutely ruthless“.
But “they can’t blame Ncube for the crisis we are in. The question is: 27 years after independence, where are we as a nation? The shops are empty,“ he added.
Eldred Masunugure, a lecturer in political science at the University of Zimbabwe, said the government has managed successfully to push out Ncube as it did not want to be seen clashing with the Catholic church.
Mugabe, 83, is a Catholic.
“The government did not want to deal with him whilst he was wearing the Roman Catholic garb, they wanted to deal with him personally,“ he said.
Mugabe’s position has also been consolidated by the division within the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), since its leader Morgan Tsvangirai decided to boycott senate elections last November.

SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 16--A senior North Korean official denied a report that Pyongyang was giving nuclear expertise to Syria, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday.
The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, last week reported that intelligence gathered over the past six months had led some US officials to believe Syria was receiving help from North Korea on some sort of nuclear facility, Reuters reported.
The intelligence, including satellite imagery, suggested the facility could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons, the Post said.
“They often say things that are groundless,“ Yonhap quoted Kim Myong-gil, deputy chief of the North Korean mission to the United Nations, as saying.
Kim said he had nothing more to say and hung up the phone when asked to elaborate, Yonhap said.
North Korea is widely thought to sell conventional weapons to Syria though analysts say its armaments trade in general has been hit hard by tough sanctions since the reclusive state nearly a year ago tested its first nuclear device.
Pyongyang agreed earlier this year to start dismantling its nuclear facilities, and source of weapons-grade plutonium, in return for massive aid. More recently, the United States has held out the possibility of normalizing ties if the ostracized North completely scraps its nuclear weapons program.
The Syria reports have angered US conservatives who believe North Korea cannot be trusted to keep its word and that talks on nuclear disarmament with regional powers, expected to resume next week, the six-party talks, are bound to fail.
On Friday, the lead US negotiator with North Korea declined to confirm the Syria reports but said they underscored the need for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programs.

Andrei Lugovoi

MOSCOW, Sept. 16--The sole suspect in the radiation poisoning death of Kremlin foe Alexander Litvinenko has been nominated to run for parliament on a pro-Kremlin ultranationalist party’s ticket, its leader said Sunday.
Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky said that Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer whom Britain has identified as the main suspect in last year’s murder in London of Litvinenko, would be No.2 on the party’s list in December’s parliamentary elections, AFP said.
Meanwhile, Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant politician who heeds Kremlin’s orders, dismissed British charges against Lugovoi as “an attempt to organize provocations against our citizens,“ Interfax said.
Lugovoi refused immediate comment, saying he would talk about the issue after the party’s congress Monday.
Litvinenko, a former KGB officer with asylum in Britain died Nov. 23 in a London hospital after ingesting radioactive polonium-210. In a deathbed statement, he accused Putin of being behind his killing--the charges the Kremlin has fiercely denied.
Litvinenko said he first felt ill Nov. 1, the day he met with Lugovoi and two other Russians at a London hotel bar.
Russia has rejected Britain’s request for Lugovoi’s extradition, saying its constitution forbids it. Tensions over the Litvinenko case have badly hurt bilateral ties, and the two nations recently announced tit-for-tat diplomat expulsions.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has dismissed British demands for Lugovoi’s extradition as a vestige of British “colonial thinking.“

KHOST, Afghanistan, Sept. 16--Afghan and US-led troops backed by air forces fought new battles with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, killing more than a dozen of the rebels, officials said Sunday.
About 10 insurgents were killed early Sunday when US-led warplanes pounded militant positions in the southern province of Helmand, the US military said.
“Precision munitions were employed on locations in Garmser district where the combined forces suspected Taliban militants were hiding,“ a statement from the US-led coalition said.
A military spokesman told AFP that about 10 rebels had been killed.
Four other rebels were killed overnight in a battle that erupted after they attacked a police post in the eastern province of Paktia, provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai told AFP.
Five other rebels were wounded in that attack, he added.
The attacks were the latest in an upsurge in violence over the past two years linked to the Taliban-led insurgency that was launched after the hardliners were removed from government in late 2001 by the US-led coalition.
Around 5,000 people have been killed this year, most of them rebel fighters, according to an AFP count. Nearly 550 Afghan security forces and 160 international soldiers have also died, most of them in action.
Large areas of the country are considered out of bounds for foreign nationals, and Afghans not resident there, because of the deteriorating security situation.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Sept. 16--Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert delayed a plan to release from prison scores of members of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah movement, Israeli officials said on Saturday.
Officials said Olmert had planned to ask the cabinet on Sunday to release more prisoners, but the item was removed from the agenda amid fears it would not garner enough support. Plans to release more prisoners have already been delayed once, Reuters reported.
“It’s not coming up tomorrow. It’s been put off because there is no agreed upon list,“ one government official said, asking not to be named.
Israeli government spokesman David Baker said he did not have the agenda for Sunday’s cabinet meeting.
Olmert told Abbas at a meeting on Monday he would ask his cabinet to approve the prisoner release as a goodwill gesture for the Ramadan fast month, which began this week, Palestinian officials said. Israel had been expected to free around 100 Fatah prisoners.
Israel has already freed more than 250 prisoners, mostly Fatah members, as part of a plan to bolster Abbas against Islamist rival Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June.
It is unclear whether Olmert has enough support to push through the plan after a series of rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza in recent weeks rekindled calls within the Zionist regime state for tougher action against militants to curb the salvoes.
The officials said any prisoners to be released would have “no blood on their hands“ and at least one year left on their sentences. They would be released on condition they signed a document promising not to be involved in violence.
Olmert is engaged in talks with Western-backed Abbas to prepare for a US-sponsored Middle East peace conference expected in November.
The issue of releasing prisoners is highly emotive for Palestinians, who see their some 11,000 brethren held in Israeli jails as fighters for freedom from Israeli occupation in the West Bank.