WASHINGTON, Aug. 22--A top Taliban commander said Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is alive and well, according to US-based analysts monitoring extremist publications.
“All praise be to Allah, he is extremely healthy and active,“ the commander Mansour Dadullah said in a video interview, according to a transcript of the video’s English subtitled translation, released Tuesday by the analyst IntelCenter.
Dadullah, whose brother Mullah Dadullah was also a top commander in the Afghanistan-based militants and was killed this year, said he had been contacted by Bin Laden, the man blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, AFP said.
“I received a message from him in which he advised me ’I must follow Mullah Dadullah and continue the same activities so that the mujahedeen may not weaken,“ he said, according to the transcript.
After the attacks the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime allied with Al-Qaeda and believed the Saudi-born Bin Laden was hiding there. But after pounding the mountains where his den was thought to be, US-led forces failed to find him.
Meanwhile, Taliban militants who have been holding 19 South Koreans for more than a month renewed a threat Wednesday to kill them if their demands are not met, Turkishpress reported.
A purported rebel spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, said some of the captives were sick and they were also suffering from lack of proper food.
“If the demands of the Taliban are not met the Korean hostages face death,“ Mujahed said in a telephone call from an unknown location.
“Although we want this crisis to be solved through negotiations, it seems the US authorities are creating problems.“
He did not, however, set any deadline and it was impossible to verify his comments independently.

ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 22--Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan came under fire on Wednesday for calling on Turks who refused to accept Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as their next president to leave Turkey.
Turkey, a Muslim country with a strictly secular constitution, is polarized over whether or not Gul, a respected diplomat with a past in political Islam, should become the next head of state, reported Reuters.
Top-selling Turkish newspapers, non-governmental organizations and opposition parties described as undemocratic Erdogan’s attack on Hurriyet newspaper columnist Bekir Coskun.
“The people who say that (Gul is not my president), must renounce their citizenship,“ Erdogan said on television late on Monday, according to Hurriyet, the country’s largest daily.
“You’re this country’s citizen, the president is your president, the prime minister is your prime minister.“
Gul is running as the ruling AK Party’s sole candidate in a race which has heightened tensions between the government and the military as well as with the secular elite.
Erdogan’s critics on Wednesday called on him to apologize for his response to Coskun.
The foreign minister won the first round of the presidential election in parliament on Monday but fell just short of securing the two-thirds majority needed to become the European Union-candidate country’s next head of state immediately.

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Aug. 22--Taiwan’s cabinet agreed Wednesday to hike military spending by nearly 15 percent in next year’s budget
in an apparent signal of its resolve against rival China.
Under a draft budget, which has to be confirmed by parliament, the defense ministry is setting aside 345.9 billion Taiwan dollars ($10.5 billion), up 44.6 billion Taiwan dollars, the cabinet said in a statement, AFP said.
The rise in spending is mainly aimed at financing procurement of military equipment, including US-made P-3C submarine-hunting aircraft. Washington, the island’s leading arms supplier despite not having formal diplomatic ties, has repeatedly asked Taipei to display its determination to defend itself by boosting military spending.
The Chinese government had in May announced the biggest increase in its military budget in recent years, saying its spending in 2007 would rise 17.8 percent from last year to 350.9 billion yuan (about $45 billion).
Reunification with Taiwan is one of China’s long-term strategic objectives, and analysts have said Beijing is beefing up its military partly to enable it to take the island back by force if necessary.
China and Taiwan have been separated since the end of a civil war in 1949, but Beijing still considers the island part of its territory. Taiwan has been led since the turn of the century by independence-leaning President Chen Shui-bian, exacerbating fears in Beijing that the island could break away for good.

Former South African president and Nobel peace prize laureate Nelson Mandela (r) receives Sonia Gandhi in Johannesburg, Aug. 22.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa,
Aug. 22--The leader of India’s ruling party, Sonia Ghandi, on Wednesday met with South African former president Nelson Mandela, calling her visit to the country a pilgrimage.
Gandhi presented a smiling Mandela with a book entitled ’Gandhi’s Way’ which celebrated a centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of peace and humanity.
The Italian-born leader of India’s powerful Congress party is in South Africa to launch a series of lectures on the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent satyagraha movement, which he launched in South Africa before turning his efforts to the struggle for independence.
“It’s a privilege for me to be here. A visit to South Africa for me as an Indian is a pilgrimage. Coming here without calling on Mandela--the visit would not be complete,“ Gandhi said.
She would be kicking off the series of lectures which would take place around the country at the University of Cape Town on Thursday.
Anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 18 years on Robben Island where Mandela was incarcerated, outlined the significance of Gandhi’s visit and the long relationship between South Africa’s liberation movement and India.
“As early as 1946, India was the first country in the world to place sanctions on South Africa, it was the first country to recall its high commissioner and place the issue of racial discrimination on the agenda of the United Nations,“ Kathrada said.
Gandhi said it was an honor and a moving moment, to be in the presence of Mandela and other leaders of the campaign against whites-only rule.

The visiting Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and his host, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, find their carefully planned party this week to celebrate the world’s newest strategic partnership ruined by their domestic political opponents.
After his big defeat in last month’s elections to the Upper House of the Japanese Diet, Abe is fighting for political survival. Singh, too, is under pressure from his communist allies for the ’sin’ of engineering independent India’s greatest diplomatic victory--the liberation of the nation from three and a half decades of nuclear isolation. In politics no good deed ever goes without being punished, Indiaexpress.com wrote.
Underlying the political instability staring at Abe and Singh is the deeper challenge of getting Japan and India to overcome decades of reactive foreign policy and end the historic under-performance of the two nations on the Asian and global political stage. As Abe and Singh try to establish Japan and India as great powers, they face strong domestic political reaction.
In Japan it goes by the name of “pacifism“ that has become a cover for avoiding regional and global responsibility. In India it is called “non-alignment“. When India is well on its way to become the world’s third largest economy, and poised to shape the security order in Asia, our communists want India to stay for ever the third world subaltern mouthing empty slogans.
For different reasons, both Japan and India were unable in the second half of the 20th century to fulfill their national aspirations for leading Asia and securing a seat at the global high table. Defeated in the Second World War, Japan consciously chose to forgo great power aspirations in favor of an undiluted focus on national reconstruction.
Newly independent India had a sense of its own destiny to lead Asia. Its fascination for state socialism, however, saw India’s relative decline amidst the Asian economic boom. Its alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold War put it at odds with much of Asia, including China.
Since the end of the Cold War, both Japan and India have struggled to elevate their power positions in Asia. Japan’s emphasis has been on lending political muscle to its well-known economic strengths. India’s in turn was on acquiring an economic foundation to match its strategic ambitions.
The foreign policies of both nations have undergone considerable changes in the last few years. Thanks to the efforts of Abe’s predecessors, especially Junichiro Koizumi, Japan has begun to liberate itself from many of the self-imposed restrictions of the past.
These prohibitions amounted to eight no’s in Japan’s foreign policy during the Cold War: no dispatch of the armed forces abroad, no collective self-defense arrangements, no power projection ability, no more than 1 per cent of the GNP for defense spending, no nuclear weapons, no sharing of military technology, no exporting of arms, no military use of space. In post-Cold War Japan, all these taboos, except the one on nuclear weapons, have been either modified or are up for change. Even the difficult question of nuclear weapons is being openly discussed after the North Korean atomic tests last year.
The recent changes in Indian foreign policy have been no less dramatic. If the relationship with the US has grabbed the most attention, the positive evolution in India’s relationships with all the great powers, including China, has been impressive. And it is on the verge of being accepted as a de facto nuclear weapon power.
India’s rising profile in the extended neighborhood stretching from Africa to East Asia through the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and Southeast Asia has been equally significant. India is also actively seeking to reintegrate its periphery with the framework of regional cooperation.
Despite the rapid transformation of their foreign policies, Japan and India have run into a new political barrier, China. Barring left-wing ideologues, few have difficulty in recognizing the fact that China does not want other powers to rise in Asia. It was equally predictable that China would do its utmost to prevent Japan and India from gaining permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council. Nor is it shocking that China is the only nuclear weapon power that opposes the Indo-US nuclear deal.
China’s clout to limit the political aspirations of India and Japan is not limited to the international domain. Beijing has been adept at leveraging domestic lobby groups in both countries to prevent outcomes it considers unacceptable.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 22--Russia says its investigation showed it could not have dropped a missile in Georgia and accused the former Soviet republic of deliberately inventing a “political tsunami.“
Georgia has charged that a Russian plane dropped the missile on August 6 near the town of Tsitelubani, in what it called an “act of aggression.“ The incident reignited feuding between Russia and its pro-Western neighbor, Reuters reported.
Summarizing results of a Russian probe conducted on August 16-17 of the missile site, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin on Tuesday accused Georgia of thwarting a proper investigation by even covering up the hole where the weapon was found.
“Georgia leveled and filled in the hole,“ Churkin told a news conference. He said that remains of the missile included a small piece bearing markings in English.
Experts from the United States, Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania said their investigation showed that a plane from Russia was responsible. But Churkin said this group made no effort to get in touch with Russian experts.
Experts from those countries identified the missile as the Russian-designed KH-58 and said that the Georgian air force did not have aircraft equipped with or able to launch KH-58 missiles.
Churkin said Georgia showed Russia parts of what it said was an unexploded Russian KH-58 missile. But among the fragments only three belonged to a munitions of that class while others had markings were not part of a KH-58 missile, he said.

SYDNEY, Australia, Aug. 22--Australia’s Labor leader Kevin Rudd Wednesday said he would withdraw combat forces from Iraq by mid-2008 if he is elected prime minister later this year, reported AFP.
Rudd, who is leading conservative Prime Minister John Howard in the polls, said any withdrawal would not be immediate because the current government has already committed to deploying a new rotation of troops early next year.
Rudd said that if an election is held in October as expected, Australia’s combat force would be midway through their deployment.
“It would go through to its conclusion, which normally lasts for a six-month rotation, through to the end of the year,“ he said.
“I notice the government has already indicated there will be a further rotation of six months. At the conclusion of that second rotation in mid-2008, our combat force comes out and would not be replaced.“
Rudd said that, if elected, he would consider giving the Iraqis other security assistance which did not involve deploying a combat force.
Australia has about 1,575 troops committed to the Iraq war but many of these are based in nearby countries. About 515 troops, including an infantry company, are part of Australia’s battle group based in Tallil in the south.

KAMPALA, Uganda, Aug. 22--As many as 10,000 Congolese refugees have crossed the border into Uganda in the last two days, fleeing violence in their villages, local government officials said Wednesday.
Some of the refugees said they fled after a demonstration by local people protesting the failure of UN peacekeepers to improve security in their remote southeastern Congolese territory.
Refugees told of villagers hurling rocks at UN troops and some said they feared that the situation would further deteriorate, said David Masereka, the district commissioner of Kisoro, which sits along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He said the refugees had gathered on the site of a primary school in the small border town of Bunagana.
“It is mostly women and children that have arrived but they came in haste and were unable to bring food. These people are already hungry but we have no supplies to give them,“ Masereka told The Associated Press.
Uganda occupied part of the region during a 1998-2002 war in Congo that drew in military forces from six neighboring countries.