‘Chemical Ali’ sentenced to death for Shiite crackdown

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Tuesday condemnded Saddam Hussein's notorious hatchet-man "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid to death for war crimes committed during the 1991 Shiite uprising, his second death penalty.

Abdelghani Abdul Ghafor al-Ani, the head of Saddam's Baath party in southern Iraq at the time, was also sentenced to death.

The verdicts were issued after a trial which heard harrowing testimony from witnesses of Saddam's crushing of the rebellion who told of mass executions and family members being thrown from helicopters.

Saddam's cousin Majid was sentenced to death in June 2007 for genocide after ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign, when Iraqi forces strafed villages with poison gas, the source of his grim nickname.

Iraq's presidential council approved the death sentences of Majid and two other former senior military officials -- Sultan Hashim al-Tai, another former defence minister, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, former armed forces deputy chief of operations -- in February, after months of legal wrangling.

But the three, who remain on death row in US custody, were later charged with committing similar war crimes in southern Iraq during the Shiite uprising that followed Saddam's crushing defeat by US forces in the 1991 Gulf War.

Tai and five other officials received 15 years in prison for their role in the crackdown, and Tikriti and three other officials received life sentences. Three defendants were acquitted.

Perhaps as many as 100,000 people were killed as troops carried out massacres around the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala and shelled towns and villages across the south in 1991.

Many Shiites who participated in the uprising say they had expected US forces to back them, but former US president George Bush instead ordered a halt at the Iraqi border, leaving the rebels at the mercy of Saddam's forces.

Majid, 68, who served as interior minister at the time of the uprising, was was arrested by US forces in August 2003.

In August 2007 an unidentified witness accused Majid of personally executing her two sons by tying bricks to their feet and throwing them out of helicopters into the Gulf after detaining them in March 1991.

Another witness, who also testified behind a curtain, said in September 2007 that Majid had overseen the execution of some 200 people in a sports stadium near the southern city of Basra, where troops shot them dead in batches of 25. - AFP

N Korean N. envoy in Singapore for expected talks with US

SINGAPORE: North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator arrived in Singapore Tuesday night ahead of an expected meeting with his US counterpart to clear apparent hurdles in a deal over the North's nuclear weapons programmes.

Kim Kye-Gwan arrived in a black Mercedes-Benz shortly after 11:00 pm (1500 GMT) at the residence of North Korea's ambassador to Singapore. Japanese television cameramen surrounded the car but Kim made no comment.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing diplomatic sources, reported earlier from Beijing that Kim flew to Singapore from the Chinese capital, where he had travelled earlier from Pyongyang.

The US negotiator, Christopher Hill, said on a visit to Japan Tuesday that he would go to Singapore and meet Kim after further talks in Tokyo on Wednesday.

On his Japan stop, Hill was to meet again Wednesday with his Japanese counterpart Akitaka Saiki as well as South Korean nuclear envoy Kim Sook. A US embassy spokesman in Singapore had no details of a meeting between Hill and Kim but said that the US negotiator will be holding consultations this week with his partners in the six-nation talks on communist North Korea's nuclear programme.

A man who answered the phone at North Korea's Singapore embassy said he had no information.

The State Department said Hill is also to consult with his counterparts from South Korea, Japan, China and Russia before all six delegates meet on Monday in Beijing to finalise the deal struck in October to check that Pyongyang is scrapping its nuclear weapons programmes.

"Obviously, there are some really tough issues we're going to take up in Beijing," Hill said in Tokyo.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the six-party heads of delegation meeting in Beijing is aimed at finalising a plan allowing for outside verification of the North's disarmament.

The United States struck North Korea from a terrorism blacklist on October 11 after saying that Pyongyang -- which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006 -- agreed to steps to verify disarmament and pledged to resume disabling its atomic plants following a months-long dispute.

The steps are to be codified into a "verification protocol" Rice wants signed in Beijing next Monday.

But North Korea disputes a US claim that it agreed to the removal of samples, saying that external verification of its nuclear inventory will involve only field visits, confirmation of documents and interviews with technicians. - AFP

Qatada ordered back behind bars

LONDON: A British tribunal ruled Tuesday that Muslim cleric Abu Qatada, once described as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, should return to jail, after finding he breached his bail terms.

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) was told that Qatada, who was on a 22-hour curfew until being arrested last month, had plotted to leave Britain.

"For the reasons outlined in the judgment, the Commission revokes bail and directs that Othman be detained under immigration powers," said judge John Mitting after a short hearing.

The 47-year-old -- real name Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman -- has been convicted of terrorism charges in Jordan but Britain cannot deport him there due to a court ruling in May which found that he could face mistreatment there.

Qatada -- who was labelled Bin Laden's "right-hand man" by a leading Spanish anti-terror judge -- gained refugee status in Britain in 1994 and has been in and out of prison since.

He was released most recently in June on a strict form of bail and re-arrested in November, although the exact circumstances around his detention remain secret.

Under his bail terms, Qatada was notably banned from attending any mosques, leading prayers, giving lectures, or "providing religious instruction" to anyone except his wife and children.

He was also banned from associating with a list of named people, including Bin Laden, as well as the Al-Qaeda leader's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. - AFP

China reports huge increase in children sickened by tainted milk

BEIJING: China has dramatically raised the tally of children sickened by dairy products laced with the industrial chemical melamine to 294,000, and said six babies may have died from drinking toxic milk.

In a late-night statement on Monday, the health ministry's new tally of children who suffered kidney-related problems was nearly six times its original figure of 53,000 given in late September.

The statement said six deaths since September may have been caused by consumption of the tainted dairy products. That compares to a previous confirmed death toll of three infants.

However the ministry indicated that virtually all of those who fell ill were no longer in need of medical care and said the worst of the crisis was over.

"Through the intense efforts of health ministry departments, medical organs and masses of medical personnel over the past two months, the peak has passed," it said.

Melamine is a chemical normally used to make plastics but it emerged in September that it had been routinely mixed into watered-down Chinese milk and dairy products to give the impression of higher protein content.

Melamine can cause kidney stones if taken in excessive levels and babies who were fed tainted milk powder suffered the worst because they consumed so much of the chemical. - AFP

ASEAN moot in Thailand postponed

BANGKOK: Crisis-hit Thailand has postponed a summit of the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN scheduled for mid-December until March, a government spokesman said Tuesday.

News of the delay came shortly after the country's constitutional court dissolved Thailand's ruling party and barred Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat from politics for five years.

"The ASEAN summit has been postponed to March next year," government spokesman Nattawut Saikaur said after Somchai's final cabinet meeting in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

The summit had been scheduled for December 15-18, also in Chiang Mai. It had already been moved out of Bangkok due to the turmoil, which has seen protesters occupy both of the capital's airports.

Protesters said later Tuesday they would lift the airport siege, which has cost Thailand economically and in terms of its international image both as a tourist haven and a beacon of stability in the region. - AFP

Mistaken killing of Brazilian not unlawful: coroner

LONDON: Jurors at an inquest into death of an innocent Brazilian mistakenly shot by police in an anti-terror operation cannot rule he was killed unlawfully, a coroner said Tuesday.

The former High Court judge overseeing the London inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes told the jury that they can only reach a verdict of lawful killing or an "open verdict."

After seven weeks of evidence in the closely-watched inquest, coroner Michael Wright told the jury that a verdict of unlawful killing was "not justified." De Menezes was shot seven times in the head at a London Underground train station on July 22, 2005, the day after a failed attempt to replicate the attacks of July 7 when four suicide bombers killed 52 people.

Police shot him in a train that had stopped at a south London train station after following him in the mistaken belief he was failed suicide bomber Hussain Osman, who was then on the run and lived in De Menezes's block of flats. - AFP

World leaders hails nomination of Clinton

PARIS: US allies gave a warm welcome to Hillary Clinton's return to the world stage as US secretary of state but her husband, former president Bill Clinton remained tight-lipped about the appointment.

In Hong Kong, Philippines President Gloria Arroyo on Tuesday congratulated the couple before she addressed the opening session of a two-day conference hosted by Bill Clinton in Hong Kong.

China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi echoed Arroyo's congratulatory words during a forum about climate change.

Bill Clinton simply nodded his head following the words about his wife's nomination and in his address to the conference spoke only about climate change and the global financial crisis.

In Tokyo, Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said he looked forward to working with Clinton, noting she had stressed the importance of the alliance. The reaction of Asian leaders largely echoed those earlier from Europe. The main dissenting voice however, came earlier from Russia.

"These nominations inspire no optimism whatsoever," the Russian lower house's foreign affairs commission chief, Konstantin Kossachev, told Interfax news agency. Kossachev was also referring to Obama's decision to retain Robert Gates as defense secretary. But British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, praised Clinton, describing her most appealing characteristic as "a determination to defy fatalism." – AFP