Pakistani people gather around the dead bodies in front of a vehicle carrying former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto at the bomb explosion site in Karachi, Oct. 17.

KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct. 23--Two suicide bombers were apparently behind the bloody assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto and investigators are trawling Pakistan’s national identity card database to establish their identities, a top official said Tuesday.
Sindh provincial Gov. Ishrat Ul-Ebad Khan said people in custody in connection with seven previous suicide attacks were being questioned in prisons in the city and elsewhere in Pakistan in the hope they can provide clues into Thursday’s bombing that killed 136 people, reported AP.
Police had initially said only one suicide bomber participated in the attack, but Khan said “it was more than likely“ there were two, after pieces of a second severed head were found at a hospital and at the site of the attack.
He said the state agency that oversees Pakistan’s national identity cards was helping to try and identify the bombers--one of whose pictures has been made public.
Khan said although no arrests had been made there was progress in the investigation. He rebutted earlier reports that three men had been detained in connection with a vehicle used by an attacker.
Bhutto’s spokeswoman reiterated a call for the chief investigator to be replaced.
She has already called for Pakistan to seek expert help from the US and Britain in the probe.
“Benazir Bhutto is not satisfied with the investigation, comments made by some elements of the government blaming (Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party) are increasing her concerns,“ spokeswoman Sherry Rahman said.
Bhutto escaped unhurt from the bombing that targeted her heavily guarded convoy in the southern city of Karachi Thursday around midnight, about 10 hours after she returned to Pakistan from an eight-year, self-imposed exile.
Bhutto claims that streetlights had been deliberately extinguished on her route to conceal the attacker--a claim that Khan said would be investigated although he said TV footage of the incident showed lights were on.

BAGHDAD, Iraq,
Oct. 23--Osama bin Laden scolded his Al-Qaeda followers in Iraq and other insurgents, saying they have “been lax“ for failing to overcome fanatical tribal loyalties and unite in the fight against US troops.
The message of his new audiotape Monday reflected the growing disarray among Iraq’s Sunni Arab insurgents and bin Laden’s client group in the country, both of which are facing heavy US military pressure and an uprising among Sunni tribesmen, AP reported.
In the brief tape played on Al-Jazeera television, the terrorist leader urged militants to “beware of division ... The Muslim world is waiting for you to gather under one banner.“
He used the word “ta’assub“--“fanaticism“--to chastise insurgents for putting their allegiance to tribe or radical organization above the larger fight to overcome American forces.
While the authenticity of the tape could not be verified immediately, the voice resembled that of bin Laden in previous messages. US officials in Washington said analysts were still studying the tape.
Al-Jazeera did not say how it got the tape, which was bin Laden’s third this year.
“My mujahedeen brothers in Iraq, you are a people worthy of praise and flattery. You’ve done well to carry out a glorious duty by fighting the enemy. But some of you have lagged behind in carrying out another glorious duty, which is to unite as one,“ bin Laden said.
He warned followers “against hypocritical enemies who are infiltrating your ranks to create sedition among mujahedeen groups.“
Anthony Cordesman, a terror analyst for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said bin Laden’s underlying message appeared to be aimed at Al-Qaeda in Iraq--“that Al-Qaeda needs to be less arrogant and moderate its conduct.“
Cordesman pointed to Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s attempts to impose Taliban-like Islamic laws in some areas it controlled as well as its killings of rival tribal figures, actions that alienated some Sunni Arabs and led them to join a movement opposing Al-Qaeda.

TOKYO, Oct. 23--Russia’s foreign minister was in Japan Tuesday to voice concern about a missile shield Tokyo is building with Washington, which Moscow views as another affront by the United States.
Japan, a close US ally, has never signed a peace treaty with Russia to formally end World War II due to a dispute over four islands off Japan’s northern coast which Soviet troops seized in 1945, reported AFP.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Tokyo for a day of talks with his Japanese counterpart Masahiko Komura and the government’s number two Nobutaka Machimura, a foreign ministry official said.
While the two nations are also expected to discuss the island dispute, Lavrov said he would press Tokyo on its missile system.
In an interview with Japan’s Kyodo News ahead of his trip, Lavrov said Russia was “opposed to the construction of a missile defense system aimed at securing military superiority.“
The United States and Japan began working on the missile shield project in 1998 after North Korea shot a ballistic missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean.
“A closed format for military and political alliances... will not be able to increase mutual trust in the region,“ Lavrov told Kyodo News.
“It will bring about results that are opposite to the expectations“ of the United States, Japan, and Russia, he added.
Relations have turned increasingly acrimonious between a newly assertive Kremlin and a conservative-led White House.

BERLIN, Oct. 23--The election victory of Polish liberal leader Donald Tusk has raised hopes in Germany that the two neighbors can bury grievances dating back to World War II and work to unite Europe.
“We are looking forward to working with the incoming Polish government and I hope we will work well together,“ German Chancellor Angela Merkel said of the victory of Tusk’s Civic Platform party over Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s ultra-conservatives in Sunday’s election, AFP reported.
“We want to work together well with Poland as a neighbor and also within the European Union,“ Merkel said.
Merkel had fractious relations with the populist Kaczynski and his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski.
Stephen Bastos, from the German Council on Foreign Relations, said there was rejoicing in Berlin at the shift in the Polish political landscape.
“The sense of relief among diplomats is very strong, very hard to ignore,“ he told AFP.
“Things have been pretty rough for the past two years--the atmosphere was really poisoned under the Kaczynski twins--and this offers the chance to bring Polish-German relations onto a new level, so a lot has to be accomplished now.“
Bastos said Warsaw and Berlin must seize the chance to lay to rest the lingering rancour over World War II that was exploited by the Kaczynskis.
They memorably did so before the 2005 elections that brought their Law and Justice party to power, but the low point came this year when the prime minister invoked the carnage wrought by the Nazis in the row over EU voting rights.
Kaczynski sent shockwaves beyond even Germany by stating that without the Nazi invasion, Poland would today be a nation of 66 million people instead of 38 million.

Omar Al-Beshir

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Oct. 23--Sudanese President Omar Al-Beshir on Tuesday rejected an appeal by southern ex-rebels for outside help to end a crisis sparked by their withdrawal from government over the non-application of a peace deal.
“The call to resolve the crisis through regional and international mechanisms boils down to a rejection“ of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Africa’s longest running civil war, Beshir said.
According to AFP, his words came after Sudan People’s Liberation Movement leader Salva Kiir--a former rebel who became first vice president under the terms of the CPA--appealed to the international community for help to end the crisis.
“I am launching a special appeal to countries in the region and to the countries of the world to save the CPA,“ said Kiir, whose SPLM pulled out of Sudan’s unity government on October 11.
The SPLM’s withdrawal from the cabinet plunged north-south relations into their worst crisis since the 2005 peace deal.
But in a televised speech marking the start of a new parliament session, Beshir insisted on his readiness to “apply all of the CPA“ and called on the SPLM to go back on its decision.
Southern involvement in government is “the best guarantee that the CPA will be applied,“ he said.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct. 23--President Mwai Kibaki has dissolved Kenya’s parliament, starting the countdown to elections in December that promise to be the most closely contested polls in the country’s history.
“It is only through a fair and credible poll, free of violence and intimidation that the true verdict of the people will prevail,“ Kibaki said.
The dissolution of parliament means members of the National Assembly no longer serve as lawmakers and Kibaki’s administration continues only in a caretaker capacity, legally unable to make any major decisions until a new government forms, AFP said.
Under Kenyan law, the Electoral Commission of Kenya now must declare a date for presidential, parliamentary and local elections within 10 working days and the election must be held within three months. This year’s election will be the first time an incumbent president has faced a credible challenge in Kenya.
When Kibaki ran in 2002, then-President Daniel arap Moi was constitutionally barred from extending his 24 years in power. Moi won in 1992 and 1997 amid vote-rigging allegations.
Kibaki, 75, had been the front-runner in opinion polls this year until this month, when he lost his lead to his main challenger, former Cabinet minister Raila Odinga.
In recent opinion polls, Odinga leads by about 10 percentage points although the volatility of Kenyan politics means the figures could fluctuate significantly.
Kenya’s estimated 34 million people have witnessed significant improvements over the past four-and-a-half years of Kibaki’s administration, compared with the widespread corruption of the Moi years. Economic growth reached 6.1 percent in 2006, a rate Kenya last saw in 1981.
But inflation caused by the growing economy could work in the opposition’s favor.
The cost of living has increased and the number of jobs created each year has mostly remained stagnant.

LONDON, Oct. 23--Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has said that the 11 September attacks were “not that terrible“ compared to the IRA’s terror campaign.
“Some Americans will think I’m crazy... but it was neither as terrible or as extraordinary as they think,“ the writer told Spanish newspaper El Pais.
The 88-year-old added that “people forget“ the IRA bomb attack on Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1984, BBC said.
Lessing won the Nobel prize, worth £763,000, honoring her 57-year career.
Five people died and 34 were injured when an IRA bomb exploded in a Brighton hotel where leading members of the Conservative party--including Mrs Thatcher--were staying for its annual conference.
The author conceded that “many people died and two prominent buildings fell“ in the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001.
“They’re a very naive people, or they pretend to be,“ she added of Americans.
Lessing, whose novels include The Golden Notebook and Memoirs of a Survivor, also branded President George W Bush “a world calamity“.