KIEV, Ukraine,
Oct. 13--Ukraine’s political leaders on Saturday postponed until next week the submission of an agreement on a post-election parliamentary coalition, to be made up of parties linked to the 2004 “Orange Revolution.“
Officials close to former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the largest “orange“ group to win seats in the September 30 election, said they were preparing the necessary documents to submit to the president next week, Reuters reported.
President Viktor Yushchenko’s office said he planned no meetings. Formal signature of a coalition agreement can take place only after official results are issued, probably early next week.
Tymoshenko and Yushchenko had said on Friday they hoped to complete the first stage of submitting documents on Saturday.
Tymoshenko’s bloc and the pro-presidential Our Ukraine party hold 228 seats, two more than needed to win most votes in the chamber. But the Regions Party of the president’s arch rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich is the largest single party.
Tymoshenko said on Friday she had agreed to implement the president’s calls in the aftermath of the election to ensure his rivals received some senior posts.

CAIRO, Egypt,
Oct. 13--Dozens of Muslim Brotherhood members were arrested Saturday after police fired tear gas at hundreds of worshippers in a northern Nile Delta city shortly before prayers celebrating the festival that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, police and group’s Web site reported.
The clashes erupted when Brotherhood members rallied Muslim worshippers to hold Eid Al-Fitr prayers in an empty lot instead of a separate area allotted by the government in the village of Old Salhiya, said a police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak to the press. During Eid, it is customary for many Muslims pray outside instead of in mosques, AP said.
Blue security trucks sealed off the area while police fired tear gas to disperse the gathering, the official said. Brotherhood members and others reacted by hurling stones at security forces.
The local Muslim Brotherhood Web site 15 people injured and 35 arrested.
Police said that dozens arrested but didn’t give a specific number.
Sharqiya, like many Nile Delta cities, is known as a Muslim Brotherhood hideout.
The Brotherhood, which has been banned since 1954, is Egypt’s largest opposition group. Its lawmakers, who run as independents, currently hold 88 seats in the 454-member lower house of the parliament.
Authorities have increasingly cracked down on the Islamist group since December, including sending 40 of its top financiers and businessmen to a military tribunal on charges of money laundering and supporting terrorism.
The Brotherhood claim that at least 600 of its members have been detained, including key leaders.

Sudanese women and children stand in front of burnt out shops in the marketplace in Muhajariya town, southern Darfur following violent clashes, Oct. 10.

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Oct. 13--A decision by Sudan’s former southern rebels to withdraw from the national government, and the escalation of conflict in the western region of Darfur, is sparking growing concern among world powers.
The former rebels decided to leave the government, accusing the government of dragging its feet in implementing the commitments it made in a 2005 peace deal that ended 21 years of war, reported AFP.
“We are concerned that recent events in Sudan threaten to set back efforts to achieve peace in Darfur and throughout Sudan,“ Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said in Washington on Friday.
“We are concerned that the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) has decided to suspend its participation in the Government of National Unity because of a deadlock with the National Congress Party over implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA),“ Casey said in a statement.
“We condemn the recent cycle of violence in Darfur and the ongoing harassment of humanitarian workers by hostile groups,“ he added.
Sudan’s dominant party, the National Congress, slammed its former southern partners Friday for undermining the peace deal by pulling out of the government and accused the SPLM of selling out to foreign interests.
Casey called on both sides “to refrain from violence, immediately withdraw their armed forces along the north-south border“ according to the deal, and “redouble their efforts to fully implement the agreement in good faith.“
The SPLM has said key problems to working with President Omar Al-Bashir’s government were its failure to withdraw northern troops from the south, decide on the fate of the disputed oil-rich region of Abiye and “the evolution of democracy in Sudan.“
The SPLM and its armed wing signed the CPA with Khartoum in 2005, ending a war between the Muslim north and Christian and animist south that killed at least two million people and displaced millions more.
The pullout raised fears of complicating planned October 27 peace talks between Khartoum and rebels from Darfur, who accuse the military and allied militia of increasing attacks after four years of civil war.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 13--The Supreme Court refused to suspend a corruption amnesty for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto but injected uncertainty into Pakistan’s turbulent politics by saying the law was reversible, lawyers said.
Bhutto is set to return to Pakistan Oct. 18 from an eight-year exile to campaign for parliamentary elections in January, reported AP.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf last week signed an ordinance quashing graft cases against the two-time prime minister and others.
That eased Bhutto’s fears of arrest on her arrival. It was one of her key demands in months of talks on a possible power-sharing deal that could see the longtime rivals become allies fighting Islamic extremism in Pakistan after the January vote.
However, legal problems bedevil both sides and could yet obstruct both Bhutto’s homecoming and Musharraf securing a new five-year term as president.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz repeated a warning from Musharraf that Bhutto should delay her return until the Supreme Court rules on whether the military leader was eligible to contest the presidential election he swept last week.
Aziz said the government would not hinder Bhutto’s return, but if the timing was wrong, it would be harmful for her, The Nation and Jang dailies reported, without giving further details.
That underscored the suspicion that lingers between the two sides.
Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup and later became a key US ally, swept a presidential election by lawmakers last weekend, but faces at least a week or so of political limbo until the court decides whether he can take up office.
If the court rules in his favor, he has promised to relinquish command of the army.
Speculation persists, however, that he may declare martial law if disqualified from a new term.
Still, most analysts expect the judges to rule in Musharraf’s favor because of the political turmoil that would result if he was blocked. The court is due to resume hearings on the case on Oct. 17, the day before Bhutto’s return.

Ismail Haniyeh

GAZA CITY, Occupied Palestine, Oct. 13--Hamas’ top leaders in Gaza and Syria warned the moderate Palestinian president not to “fall into the trap“ of an upcoming US-sponsored peace conference with Israel.
Ismail Haniyeh, who was deposed as Palestinian prime minister after Hamas violently seized Gaza in June, urged President Mahmoud Abbas to mend his rift with the Islamic militant group and criticized him for planning to attend the peace conference next month, AP said.
“Don’t fall into the trap of the coming conference. Don’t make new compromises on Beit-ul-Moqaddas, on our sovereignty,“ Haniyeh said, speaking to thousands of cheering supporters for the Muslim Eid Al-Fitr holiday.
Hamas’ Syria-based supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, echoed the warning in his own holiday message, accusing Israel and the US of taking advantage of the Palestinian rift to try to wrest concessions in peace negotiations.
Abbas retaliated for Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip by expelling the group from his government and setting up his own administration in the West Bank. Mashaal urged Abbas to accept the Islamists’ invitations for dialogue.
Abbas and his allies “will find out that they are pursuing nothing but a mirage,“ Mashaal said on Hamas radio.
Israel and the Palestinians hope to present the contours of a final peace accord at the conference, tentatively set for Annapolis, Md., at the end of November.
Israel has been pressing for a vaguely worded document that would gloss over the toughest issues--borders, control over disputed Beit-ul-Moqaddas and a solution for Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in the 1948 war that followed Israel’s creation.
Palestinians prefer a detailed preliminary agreement with a timetable for creating a Palestinian state.

Alberto Fujimori

LIMA, Peru, Oct. 13--Former President Alberto Fujimori went on trial on charges of abusing his authority in 2000 at the end of his scandal-tainted government, the first of several legal battles he faces following his extradition from Chile last month.
His lawyer, Cesar Nakazaki, told reporters outside the Lima police base where the closed-door trial is being held that the former leader was calm and answered prosecutors’ 30 questions “with clarity,“ AP said.
Fujimori is accused of abusing his power by allegedly ordering an illegal search of the apartment of the wife of his jailed former spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, to remove dozens of suitcases and boxes suspected of containing incriminating video and audio cassettes.
He faces up to seven years in prison, and Nakazaki said he expects a verdict within three weeks.
“No video was found,“ Nakazaki said. He did not specify whether Fujimori had ordered a search.
Fujimori, 69, faces three other trials, including a human rights trial scheduled to begin Nov. 26. He faces a possible 30-year prison term and a US$33 million fine if convicted in the 1992 death-squad slayings of nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University, and the 1991 killings of 15 people in Lima’s Barrios Altos neighborhood.
Fujimori fled to Japan seven years ago as his 1990-2000 authoritarian government collapsed in scandal, only to turn up in Chile in 2005 and reveal his ambition to run for Peru’s presidency.

Ricardo Sanchez

ARLINGTON, USA, Oct. 13--Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former US commander in post-invasion Iraq, lambasted the Bush administration for “incompetent strategic leadership.“
Speaking at a convention of military reporters and editors, Sanchez criticized the “surge,“ or increase in US forces, as a sign of desperation, UPI reported.
Sanchez, who retired last year, commanded coalition forces in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004.
Together with Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, he took much of the blame for early failures there. The Abu Ghraib scandal also tarnished Sanchez’s reputation.
Sanchez said that in Iraq the United States is “living a nightmare with no end in sight.“
“After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,“ Sanchez said.
Asked for specific recommendations, Sanchez gave a list that resembles those listed by President George W. Bush, including promoting reconciliation between Iraqi factions and training Iraqi security forces. But he said the administration has relied entirely on military force.

ANKARA, Turkey, Oct. 13--A Turkish minister has cancelled a visit to the United States this weekend in reaction to a US Congress vote to label the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks an act of genocide, the news agency Anatolia reported.
Minister of State Kursad Tuzmen, an influential member of the government charged with external trade, was to have attended a US-Turkish business meeting in New York, reported AFP.
Tuzmen was the second Turkish official to cancel a planned visit to the United States after the Turkish navy’s commander Admiral Metin Atac.
Turkey on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Washington after the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed the genocide resolution despite Ankara’s warnings that it could seriously damage bilateral ties.
At least 1.5 million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1917 under an Ottoman Empire campaign of deportation and murder, according to Armenians.
Ankara acknowledges that 250,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in the conflict after Armenians took up arms for independence but staunchly rejects the tag of genocide.
Turkey’s furious reaction to the Congress vote has fuelled fears within President George W. Bush’s administration that it could lose access to a crucial military base in Turkey.