Iran rejects Rumsfeld's claims:
"The repetition of such baseless claims (concerning al-Qaida) cannot portray them as valid and credible," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
U.S. officials have said at least three al-Qaida leaders are in Iran: Saif al-Adil, bin Laden's security and intelligence chief; Saad bin Laden, Osama's son; and Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, a religious scholar.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said in February that his government has detained and deported more than 500 infiltrators suspected of al-Qaida links and would arrest Saad bin Laden if he's found in the country.

Donald Rumsfeld accuses Iran:
"There are still countries harboring terrorists. I mean, we know there are senior al-Qaeda in Iran," Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld, who has previously accused Iran of giving refuge to al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan, provided no details on which of the group's leaders are believed to be in Iran.
He noted, however, Iran's alleged involvement in the 1996 terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 US military personnel.

The U.S. is warning the IAEA about Iran:
The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency would be making a big mistake if it failed to find Iran in serious violation of a key international arms control treaty, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.
"We think there are major violations and that's what the evidence shows, and the overall pattern of Iran's behavior is not consistent with anything other than a nuclear weapons program," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Washington has not been told that ElBaradei will report only minor treaty violations by Iran. But if he does, "it would be a big mistake ... If the director general doesn't follow the evidence it's going to be potentially a major problem," the U.S. official said, without elaborating.

The U.S. says Iraqi looters might not be shot:
The officials denied, however, a published report that the American military had new orders to shoot looters on sight.
"We're not going to go out and shoot children that are picking up a piece of wood out of a factory and carrying it away or a bag of cement," Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III, commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, told reporters in Baghdad.
"Our soldiers have the right to defend themselves and have. And if a looter is carrying a weapon and the soldier feels threatened, of course he is going to engage," Blount said. "We are aggressively targeting looters."
Rumsfeld said two-thirds to three-quarters of Baghdad is stable, but acknowledged that many criminals take to the streets at night. He said most of the country's jails were emptied during the war.

Cholera has arrived in southern Iraq:
The World Health Organization on Wednesday confirmed a cholera outbreak in southern Iraq, saying its lab results had showed the virus responsible for the disease was present in samples taken from Basra. WHO officials say the cases hint at a much wider epidemic in the region. Basra has had a history of cholera annually but health officials say this year's outbreak was triggered early because of the war.

There are predictions of more terrorist attacks:
US officials have warned that al-Qaeda may be planning a series of attacks on soft targets after at least 34 people, including one Australian and seven Americans, died in Monday night's synchronised car bomb attacks on three residential compounds in Riyadh.
Australian foreign affairs officials warned that further attacks in Saudi Arabia were possible, and also advised against non-essential travel to Indonesia.
The exact nature or source of the latest intelligence was not revealed but the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said that he was "very concerned about Jemaah Islamiah" - the group allegedly behind the Bali bombings which killed 200 people including 88 Australians.

South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun tries to reassure U.S. investors:
In a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce, Roh reiterated the message he delivered to financiers in New York the day before: South Korea remains a safe place to invest despite seven months of nuclear saber-rattling by North Korea.
"As for North Korea's nuclear issue, which left investors wary, I will try to resolve it peacefully without fail," Roh said.
Roh also promised the business leaders he would work to remove "confrontation and friction between labor and management" that he acknowledged was a "considerable drawback" to doing business in the country of 48 million people.
"Change is in the works, and there will be much more," he said. "Labor disputes at foreign-invested firms have been reduced virtually to a minimum." The 56-year-old former human rights lawyer has worked hard since taking power in February to dispel U.S. perceptions that he is soft on North Korea and unfriendly to business because of his long association with labor unions.

North Korea says a no-nuclear bombs agreement with the South is broken:
The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the 1992 North-South pact had been nullified.
"The Bush administration has systematically and completely torpedoed the process of denuclearization on the Korean peninsula. The inter-Korean declaration on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula was thus reduced to a dead document."
The agreement was the last legal restraint on North Korean nuclear ambitions after the Stalinist regime pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and abandoned a 1994 arms control accord with the United States.

Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has rejected ties to the U.S.:
"Some are prescribing surrender to the US adventurers, but surrender to the enemy is no remedy," Khamenei told thousands of students at Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University on Monday.
"To go to the enemy is not the solution, since that would do nothing but to reinforce his morale, and make him more and more adventurous," the powerful cleric said.
His tough words came after US officials admitted to ongoing contacts between the two nations and, a week after, 153 MPs in the 290-seat Iranian parliament signed an open letter calling for normal relations between Iran and the outside world, including the United States.

Britain has warned of the danger of more attacks in Saudi Arabia:
Britain warned on Tuesday of a "high threat" of further attacks against Western interests in Saudi Arabia -- possibly involving chemical or biological weapons -- after three suicide bombings overnight.
The Foreign Office issued a warning advising all Britons against non-essential travel to the region after the bombings on compounds housing foreigners killed or injured dozens.
"There remains a high threat of further large or small scale attacks against Western interests in Saudi Arabia," the Foreign Office said. "Terrorist attacks could involve the use of chemical and biological materials."

The New York Times says Kim Jong II changed behavior in response to the Iraq war:
American intelligence officials have concluded that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, went into seclusion during the final buildup to the war in Iraq because he feared that he too might be the target of attack. That judgment has led the Pentagon to consider new ways to hold him and his inner circle at risk as a way of bolstering deterrence on the peninsula, officials say.
A senior Defense Department official said that lessons from the attacks against Saddam Hussein of Iraq, including short-notice air strikes on suspected hideouts in the opening and closing days of the war, are shaping discussions of how best to re-arrange the American military presence in South Korea and nearby in the Pacific.
Mr. Kim vanished after he welcomed a Russian delegation on Feb. 12, and reappeared only on April 3, choosing a ceremony at a military surgeons' school for his highly symbolic return to public view, according to American intelligence officials.
Since re-emerging, Mr. Kim has mostly visited military units, including a naval weapons factory late last week, according to American intelligence officials.

Colin Powell says the U.S. still demands an end to North Korea's nuclear program:
Since the crisis erupted in October, the United States has insisted that North Korea must verifiably end both its nuclear programs based on plutonium and enriched uranium.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said that was still the case, even as Pyongyang fired another rhetorical salvo, accusing Washington of trying to scupper talks over the crisis.
"We do not want to see North Korea have a nuclear capability," said Powell after meeting NATO Secretary General George Robertson. "We believe that is also the opinion of all of North Korea's neighbors."
North Korea earlier threatened to scuttle all nuclear talks unless the United States responded positively to its offer to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for economic and diplomatic payoffs.
"If the US does not positively respond to the DPRK's (North Korea's) bold proposal, it will be held accountable for scuttling all efforts for dialogue and seriously straining the situation," the ruling Workers Party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said.

Reuters reports on the search for information about Iraq's nuclear facilities:
The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Monday it had asked the United States to let it send a mission to Iraq to investigate reports of widespread looting at the country's nuclear facilities.
While most of the radioactive material found at these sites would be unusable for atomic weapons, the IAEA is concerned that some of the material could end up in the hands of terrorists who could use it for so-called dirty bombs.

Iran asks the U.S. to fight terrorists:
Iran urged the United States on Monday not to allow an Iranian opposition group to attack the country from Iraq.
The People's Mujahedeen is on the U.S. State Department's terrorist list, yet it still signed a truce with the United States on April 15 that allowed it to keep weapons to defend itself against Iranian-backed attacks.
The group also used to be backed by Saddam Hussein as a way to harass neighboring Iran, with whom he fought a bloody war from 1980-88.
"It is unacceptable that the United States uses the terrorist hypocrites as a partner," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, referring to the Mujahedeen.
Asefi cited reports the group was operating in Iraq close to the border and planning armed attacks against Iran.

Pakistan is making an offer to India:
Pakistan will get rid of its nuclear arsenal if rival India does as well, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday.
"As far as Pakistan is concerned, if India is ready to denuclearize, we would be happy to denuclearize," Aziz Ahmed Khan said. "But it will have to be mutual."
India's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to Khan's remarks. New Delhi has said before that its nuclear program is not driven by Pakistan alone.

The CIA has redrawn its map of Kashmir:
The CIA's new map of Kashmir describes the region east of the Line of Control as "Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir" while it designates the territories to its west as "Pakistan-controlled areas of Kashmir," an Indian defence analyst noted on Sunday.
In the past, the United States has treated the whole Kashmir state as disputed, Air Commodore (retd) Jasjit Singh observed in a column in the Indian Express. "There are other notable changes from the past which would no doubt make many people wonder at the political signals implicit in the map," Mr Singh said.

Reports of a renewed link between India and Pakistan:
India is expecting resumption of air links with Pakistan within a fortnight in the wake of the recent peace initiative by India and Pakistan.
The resumption of flights would take place only after New Delhi and Islamabad formally decide to restore civil flights, said official sources here on Sunday.
Informed sources quoted the Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain as having said India would be in a position to start the process of resuming flights as early as Pakistan responds.
Indian Airlines would like to fly to Afghanistan using Pakistan's airspace if it opened it to India, he added.

A report on meetings in Baghdad's Tower of Babel Hotel regarding Iraq's future:
The US and British have been hosting a meeting in Baghdad with representatives of the five main Iraqi exile groups who met in London before the war
They have been in continuous session since Wednesday, putting together a blueprint for post-Saddam government.
But the meeting has angered Iraqi religious and political groups from inside the country, who complain of being marginalised or excluded and warn of political crisis ahead.
The blueprint being drawn up in the Babel hotel is for a western-style democracy in a state that will be secular rather than Islamist and will have a free market economy in which the dollar will be the main currency for at least the next two years.

A post-war update on the use of cluster bombs in Iraq:
The Pentagon has admitted using nearly 1,500 air-dropped cluster bombs during the war, but has not revealed information about ground-launched cluster munitions, which were far more numerous.
The Los Angles Times reported recently that the US does not keep track of ground-launched cluster munitions.
The MoD says the Israeli-made L20 cluster bombs fired by the army have a failure rate of about 2% and are designed to self-destruct if they fail to detonate. The older weapons used by the US army and the RAF's BL755s both have a far higher failure rate. About 10% of the latter fail to detonate.

The N.Y. Times reports on problems in Baghdad:
Confusion and frustration reign in most sections of Baghdad, a city of about 4.5 million people. Many businesses have yet to reopen and people are complaining of skyrocketing food prices and the lack of paychecks to buy staples.
The government, which used to be Iraq's biggest employer, is still almost completely shut down, leaving the American occupying force as the primary hope for employment.
Hundreds of angry Iraqis demonstrated today at the Palestine Hotel, where most foreign journalists here are staying, demanding order and jobs. Many protesters complained that they had filled out job applications only to learn that few if any jobs were available.

Some information on the U.N. and its role in Iraq:
Tony Blair yesterday seized the opportunity of his first meeting with US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to press for a role for the UN in the reconstruction of Iraq.
However, it became clear last night he was struggling to get the US to agree to UN involvement. It also emerged that, whatever function the UN might have in post-Saddam Iraq, thousands of British troops will be deployed there for the foreseeable future.
"Nobody is going to put themselves in hock to this," senior British defence officials said yesterday. They were referring to American concern - shared in Whitehall - about being bound by future UN security council resolutions and being subjected to vetoes.
The issue is bound up with other concerns, including the existing oil-for-food programme, and huge debts owed by Iraq to Russia and France.

A report on the Shi'ites power in today's Iraq:
The Shia - the majority sect of Islam in Iraq - who were suppressed by Saddam, are running not only hospitals but every aspect of life, including community and cultural centres and police stations.
The US is not happy that Shia gunmen are guarding the hospitals and have said they will confront the problem. But even if the Shias hand over control voluntarily they are well-entrenched at local level.
This takeover has been replicated in other parts of Baghdad and in the cities further south, such as Basra, Kerbala and Najaf.

The Guardian examines some of the issues regarding the U.N. and post-war Iraq:
Tony Blair yesterday seized the opportunity of his first meeting with US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to press for a role for the UN in the reconstruction of Iraq.
However, it became clear last night he was struggling to get the US to agree to UN involvement. It also emerged that, whatever function the UN might have in post-Saddam Iraq, thousands of British troops will be deployed there for the foreseeable future.
"Nobody is going to put themselves in hock to this," senior British defence officials said yesterday. They were referring to American concern - shared in Whitehall - about being bound by future UN security council resolutions and being subjected to vetoes.
The issue is bound up with other concerns, including the existing oil-for-food pro gramme, and huge debts owed by Iraq to Russia and France.

Donald Rumsfeld apparently believes the conflict in Afghanistan is over:
"We're at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and reconstruction," Rumsfeld said at a joint news conference with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. But he added that "there are still dangers."
U.S. officials said the announcement was meant to prod reluctant allies into sending more experts, money and equipment to help rebuild Afghanistan.
Some allies have said they wanted a declaration of an end to major combat before they send more aid.
Rumsfeld said the United States hopes to add more "provincial reconstruction teams," groups of 80 to 100 that include troops and military and civilian reconstruction experts. Three teams are working on projects such as building schools and digging water wells in Gardez, Bamiyan and Kunduz.
Officials plan to send new teams by the end of the year to Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat and Tarawan.

Pakistan is inviting India to talks at the highest levels:
Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali on Wednesday said his invitation to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for talks still stood as it was in the interest of the people of the region.
"In my telephonic conversation I had extended an invitation to Mr Vajpayee to visit Pakistan. That invitation still stands. I had even expressed my readiness to visit India, for the sake of peace in South Asia," said Mr Jamali while speaking at a news conference at the Chief Minister's House.
Governor Ishratul Ibad and Chief Minister Ali Muhammad Mahar were also present. "When we (Pakistan and India) will come to the negotiating table, we can discuss everything," Mr Jamali said.
Asked whether he considered this week's new Indian missile test helpful in creating a conducive atmosphere for dialogue, the prime minister replied: "The whole environment of India and Pakistan is under test. It is a test of leadership of the two countries."