A suicide Bomb hits Islamabad police base

A suicide bomber has killed at least five paramilitary police in an attack on a security base in the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, police say.

The attacker apparently slipped into the base under cover of darkness and attacked a mess tent, also injuring a number of policemen.

Shots heard after the explosion are believed to have come from guards.

It was the second attack on security forces in Islamabad in two weeks and comes amid a rise in militant violence.

A suicide bomb attack on a police station on 23 March left one policeman dead and another injured.

The Pakistani Taleban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Violence in Pakistan has surged in recent months amid a wave of attacks blamed on Islamist militants.

Last June a massive bomb blast in Islamabad's Marriott hotel killed at least 53 people and injured more than 250.

In Pakistan 62 migrants found dead inside truck

At least 62 people suffocated to death in the back of a truck packed with illegal migrants, and dozens were rescued unconscious after Pakistani police acting on a tip opened the vehicle Saturday near the Afghan border.

Rasool Bakhsh, a senior police official in the city of Quetta, said the shipping container the truck was carrying entered Pakistan from Afghanistan and was headed for Iran. He said most of the victims were Afghans.

More than 100 people were packed inside the 40-foot-long (12-meter-long) metal container, Bakhsh said. He said survivors were rushed to the hospital, many of them unconscious.

Khalid Masood, another senior officer, said a total of 62 were pronounced dead.

Television footage shot shortly after the white container was opened showed dozens of bodies, many of them stripped to the waist, lined up on the road next to the truck.

The stench from the container suggested some might have been dead for days, Bakhsh said.

Officials said they were holding the truck's driver as part of their investigation.

Southwestern Pakistan lies on a well-trodden route for traffickers smuggling young men from poverty-afflicted countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan hoping to find work and prosperity in Europe and elsewhere.

2 gay men killed in Baghdad slum by Iraqi police

The bodies of two gay men have been found in Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City after a leading cleric repeatedly condemned homosexuality, an Iraqi police official said Saturday.

The killings come after Shiite cleric Sattar al-Battat repeatedly condemned homosexuality during recent Friday prayers, saying Islam prohibits homosexuality. Homosexual acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq.

The two men were believed killed Thursday by relatives who were shamed by their behavior, said the official. Police said they suspected the killings were at the hands of family members because no one has claimed the bodies or called for an investigation.

The killings come weeks after Iraqi police found four bodies in late March buried near Sadr City with the words "pervert" and "puppies" written on their chests, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Puppy is a derogatory word used by residents in Sadr City to refer to homosexuals, the official said.

Sadr City, a slum of about two million people, is home to a large majority of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Al-Sadr's forces launched several uprisings against American forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, but fighting ended in Sadr City in May 2008.

"When the Mahdi army was in control, such practices were banned, and homosexuals were afraid of declaring their tendencies," the official said. But that's changed since the Mahdi Army militia cease fire took hold, the official said. The official said some people claim a coffee shop in Sadr City has become a hangout for gay men.

Sheik Ammar al-Saadi, a cleric at al-Sadr's office, denied any involvement by the Mahdi army in the killings. He said the Mahdi Army was only urging people to stop practicing homosexuality.

"Such people have brought shame on Sadr city people," he told The Associated Press. "The blame falls on the security forces who do little to combat this phenomenon or to stop the flow of pornography materials into Iraq."

Also Saturday, a tourism and antiquities ministry official said Iraq plans to open a museum filled with belongings of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Abdul-Zahra al-Talqani, the media director of Iraq's office of tourism and archaeology affairs, told The AP that the items, which include art, furniture and weapons, were being handed back to the Iraqi government by the American military.

The U.S. military had been storing weapons belonging to the late Iraqi dictator in Taji, north of Baghdad.

Al-Talqani said no site for the museum has been selected, though it could be housed in one of Saddam's palaces.

In Washington Obama's IMF pledge could be tough sell

President Barack Obama's pledge to boost IMF resources to help other crisis-hit economies could prove a tough sell for a Congress suffering from bailout fatigue and worried about mounting U.S. debt.

Obama joined other leaders of the G20 countries in London this week promising to triple funding for the International Monetary Fund as part of a package of actions to combat the global economic crisis.

The new funds are aimed mainly at struggling poorer countries, notably in eastern Europe.

"The IMF has to play a big role," Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat who heads the House Financial Services subcommittee on international monetary policy and trade, said in an interview with Reuters.

His panel is scheduled to hold a hearing later this month on the G20 meeting and the IMF request.

The IMF could receive up to $500 billion in new funds, of which $40 billion would come from China. The United States, Japan and the European Union would each contribute $100 billion with the rest coming from other countries.

Congress would have to authorize and appropriate its $100 billion share. Because technically it is a credit line, it will not be counted in deficit numbers that are already starting to alarm lawmakers

But there is already rumbling that, after last year's $700 billion banking bailout and Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus plan, Republicans may find the IMF package a little hard to swallow.

"We are spending taxpayer dollars here in Washington at a staggering rate," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Republican Leader John Boehner. "The Administration has signaled they may need more money for TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program), and now they want more money for the IMF."

DEMOCRATS READY TO PUSH

Democratic leaders say they are ready to push the request through Congress.

"We are part of a global economy, where the health of economies around the world has a direct impact on the U.S. economy," said House of Representatives Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

Analysts predict they could face skepticism from a bailout-weary public as well as from Republicans who have sought to stake out positions as fiscal conservatives.

"There will be significant resistance to this request, but ultimately the success will depend on how effectively President Obama can sell this as being in America's interest," said Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Ernest Istook, a former congressman who is now an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said arguments that the IMF funds would not add to the mounting U.S. deficit were not persuasive.

"The American people got bailout fatigue some time ago," Istook said, calling the deficit argument a red herring. "It counts against our economy. That's just bookkeeping it has nothing to do with reality."

Still, other analysts believe Obama will prevail in his request helped, in part, by the sheer scale of the financial problems facing the world.

"I think the people who are running the committees and Congress in general knows we're in the midst of a horrific international crisis and that it will be better for the world to work together rather than separately or even at odds with each other," said Ed Gresser, who heads the trade division in the liberal Progressive Policy Institute.

N. Korean Missile Test 'Requires Consequences'

The Obama administration's special representative for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth , said a missile test by Pyongyang in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution requires some consequences.

Bosworth said he still hopes North Korea will reconsider and not conduct the missile launch. But he said if the widely-expected test does proceed, he also hopes that it will not produce any long-term interruption in the Chinese-sponsored negotiations aimed at a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

Bosworth, a retired diplomat and academic named to the envoy post in February, had a measured response to what North Korea says will be the launch of an experimental satellite between Saturday and next Wednesday.

The envoy said the launch of a long-range missile, under whatever guise, would be a provocation, and a violation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1718 approved after North Korea's 2006 nuclear test and would require some consequences.

But in comments at Washington's Foreign Press Center, he also said that after, in his words, "the dust settles" following the missile episode, the six-party negotiations should resume.

"We would hope, and believe strongly, that everyone has a long-term interest - regardless of this short-term problem, in getting back to the negotiations in the six-party process as expeditiously as possible. I'm not able to predict when that might occur. But we will be talking vigorously with our partners in the process to try to bring that about," he said.


North Korea has threatened to quit the disarmament talks if it is hit with new U.N. sanctions after a missile test. Bosworth said it is hard to predict North Korean behavior, saying they might, or might not go into a "mode of escalation" in response to U.N. penalties.

Bosworth made his first trip to the region in the envoy post last month but was not invited to visit North Korea. He none-the-less said the Obama administration - in keeping with its interest in dialogue with long-time U.S. adversaries - wants bilateral contacts with North Korea and said such contacts would not harm the six-party process.

"The six-party talks, we believe, must be at the center and forefront of our efforts to deal with the issues of North Korea and their nuclear program. So that will not change," he stressed. "We will continue to have bilateral contacts with the North Koreans. We are prepared to open that channel at any point. Now, I don't think that bilateral contacts of the sort that have occurred in the past - and that I believe will occur in the future - will weaken the six-party process. I think indeed, it is possible they will strengthen the six-party process," he said.

Bosworth said there are ways to overcome the main stumbling block in the six-party talks, over verifying the declaration of its nuclear holdings North Korea made last year, and that he is not frustrated by the impasse.

He also said the Obama administration - on a separate track -- is fully engaged, through Sweden which handles U.S. diplomatic affairs in Pyongyang, to gain the release of two U.S. journalists detained by Pyongyang authorities last month.

He said there is "no higher priority" in the United States' foreign policy than the protection of its citizens abroad.

In Iraq kills Sunni paramilitary planting bomb

A U.S. aircraft fired on suspected government-allied Sunni paramilitaries planting a bomb, killing one and wounding two, the U.S. said Friday — the latest sign of trouble in a program that has been a pillar of the U.S. strategy to stabilize Iraq.

A U.S. statement said the airstrike was launched Thursday night after four gunmen, allegedly members of the Sons of Iraq, were seen planting a roadside bomb near Taji, site of a large U.S. air base about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad.

Sons of Iraq, also known as Awakening Councils, are Sunnis who broke with the insurgents and now work with the army and police to provide security in their areas.

U.S. commanders credit the more than 90,000 Sons of Iraq with playing a major role in turning the tide against al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgents following the U.S. troop surge of 2007.

But the Shiite-led government is suspicious of the groups because they include many ex-insurgents. Shiite leaders also believe some of the members are infiltrators who are still working for the insurgents.

Last weekend, U.S.-backed Iraqi forces put down an uprising in central Baghdad by members of the local Awakening Council angry over the arrest of their commander on terrorism and criminal charges.

The U.S. statement said one of the gunmen was found dead at the scene of Thursday's attack and the two wounded were captured in a nearby house, the U.S. said. They were handed over to Iraqi police.

"While we value our Sons of Iraq brothers, these men had broken faith with their fellow Sons of Iraq, the Iraqi people and us," said Maj. Gen. Daniel Bolger, commander of U.S. forces in the Baghdad area.

The attack occurred in a rural area where several bombings had occurred in recent months, the U.S. statement said.

Taji residents reached by telephone said the Thursday incident followed a growing rift between the local Sunni paramilitaries and the mostly Shiite security forces.

The residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of reprisals, said the security forces consider the Sunni council members disobedient, although they are supposed to take orders from Iraqi police and soldiers.

Council members, on the other hand, believe they never got full credit for pushing al-Qaida from the area and feel betrayed by the Americans, who raised the force but transferred it to Iraqi control last October.

Tension between the two sides rose in Taji after the crackdown on the Awakening Council group in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil, the residents said.

An Awakening Council leader in another Baghdad neighborhood, Dora, said Friday that Iraqi forces had arrested four members in the past few days because of alleged links to al-Qaida.

Police also picked up the head of the Awakening Council in Muqdadiyah, an insurgency flashpoint town 60 miles (90 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, the local military command said Friday.

Mohammed al-Jibouri, head of the Dora group, said he suspected the arrests were based on false tips from al-Qaida sympathizers in revenge for the terror movement's setbacks in the tense neighborhood.

"At the beginning, we were fighting al-Qaida and we succeeded in imposing peace," he told The Associated Press. "Now, we are worried because we are now put between the two fires of al-Qaida and the U.S.-Iraqi forces. Everybody should be aware that the main beneficiary of this situation is al-Qaida."

In an interview Friday with government television, an Iraqi military spokesman urged the Awakening Councils to purge their ranks of "ban elements" and cut their ties to militant groups, including Saddam Hussein's banned Baath party.

Last October, the U.S. transferred control of the paramilitaries to the Iraqi government, which promised to take 20 percent of them into the army or police and pay the rest until they could be found civilian jobs.

But delays in pay and a series of arrests led to fears among some Awakening Council leaders that the Shiite-run government intended to sideline the groups as U.S. influence wanes.

Also Friday, the U.S. military announced that an American soldier died of "noncombat-related causes." The soldier, who died Friday, was assigned to the 3rd Sustainment Command, a logistics and supply organization. No further details were released.

A car bomb exploded Friday night in the Karradah district of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding five, police said.