China police detain two Tibetans for inciting self-immolations

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Police have detained a Tibetan monk and his nephew in southwestern China for inciting eight people to set themselves on fire in anti-Chinese protests, the official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

Ninety-two Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest against Chinese rule since 2009, with at least 75 dying from their injuries. The number of these cases have increased significantly this year, with 28 alone in November.

Police in Sichuan province have detained Lorang Konchok, a 40-year-old monk in Aba county, and his 31-year-old nephew for inciting eight people to set themselves on fire since 2009, encouraging them by saying they would be "heroes", Xinhua said.

Three of the eight died, it said.

Tibetan areas in China have been largely closed to foreign reporters, making an independent assessment of the situation there impossible.

Xinhua said Lorang Konchok, who was detained with his nephew in August, confessed to police that he had followed instructions from exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and his followers.

Lorang Konchok and his nephew passed on information about each self-immolation, including photos, to overseas contacts belonging to a Tibetan independence organization through mobile phones, it said.

Maria Otero, United States Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, said in a statement on Wednesday that tensions in Tibetan areas, including self-immolations, had been exacerbated by tough Chinese policies and controls.

In return, China's Foreign Ministry lambasted the United States on Friday for the "disgusting" comments, saying it had prompted them to file a formal diplomatic complaint with Washington.

China has defended its iron-fisted rule in Tibet, saying the remote region suffered from dire poverty, brutal exploitation of serfs and economic stagnation until 1950, when Communist troops "peacefully liberated" it.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He denies fomenting violence or supporting independence, saying he merely wants genuine autonomy for his homeland.

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Syrian rebels elect new military commander

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebel groups have chosen a former officer to head a new Islamist-dominated command, in a Western-backed effort to put the opposition's house in order as President Bashar al-Assad's army takes hits that could usher his downfall.

In Turkey, a newly formed joint command of Syrian rebel groups has chosen Brigadier Selim Idris, one of hundreds of officers who have defected from Assad's army, as its head, opposition sources said on Saturday.

Idris, whose home province of Homs has been at the forefront of the Sunni Muslim-led uprising, was elected by 30 military and civilian members of the joint military command after talks attended by Western and Arab security officials in the Turkish city of Antalya.

The unified command includes many with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Salafists, who follow a puritanical interpretation of Islam. It excludes the most senior officers who have defected from Assad's military.

On the Damascus battlefront, Assad's forces used multiple rocket launchers on Saturday against several suburbs that have fallen to rebels who have fought their way to the edge of the city's international airport, where foreign carriers have suspended all flights.

Rebels, who have overrun several army bases near Damascus over the last month, appeared to be holding their ground, encircling a main military base in the northeastern suburb of Harasta, known as "idarat al markabat", near the main highway to Aleppo, according to opposition campaigners.

"The fighters made slight progress today. They captured a weapons depot and got to a tank repair facility in the base, but all 20 tanks inside were inoperational," said Abu Ghazi, a rebel who was speaking from the area.

"The weather cleared and MiG fighters hit rebel positions around the base. Rocket launchers did not stop for the last three days. The site is crucial for the regime," he added.

BOMBARDMENT NEAR AIRPORT

Heavy army bombardment was also reported on the town of Harran al-Awamid near the airport, which is 20 kilometers southeast of Damascus, and on the suburb of Hajar al-Aswad, at the southern entrance of the capital, which has been at the forefront of the Sunni-led revolt against Assad.

Western officials have begun speaking about faster change on the ground in a conflict that is becoming increasingly sectarian and deepening the Shi'ite-Sunni fault lines in the Middle East, a hallmark of politics in the region since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Like his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad who ruthlessly put down an Islamist challenge, the younger Assad is portraying himself as the only hope for survival of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has dominated power in majority Sunni Syria since the 1960s.

Moscow, Assad's strongest foreign backer, and Washington, which says it supplies only "non-lethal" aid to the rebels, sounded downbeat about the prospects of a diplomatic push to end the conflict after talks this week.

The head of Germany's foreign intelligence agency said Assad's government is its final stages and will be unable to survive as more parts of the country slip from his control.

"Armed rebels are coordinating better, which is making their fight against Assad more effective," Gerhard Schindler told the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung newspaper, in an interview made public on Saturday.

"Assad's regime will not survive. "Evidence is mounting that the regime in Damascus is now in its final phase," Schindler said

Setbacks for the Alawite-led military, whose core units are stationed in Damascus and on hill tops surrounding the capital, have raised Western concerns that the ruling elite may use chemical weapons to turn the tide of the war.

In a letter to the United Nations Security Council published by official state media, the Syrian foreign ministry said "Syria will not use chemical weapons under any circumstances".

"We are seriously afraid that some countries that support terrorism would supply chemical weapons to the terrorist armed groups and claim that the Syrian government is the one that is using them," the letter said.

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Bodies of three Lebanese gunmen killed in Syria returned

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - Lebanese authorities received on Sunday the first three bodies from a group of 14 Lebanese gunmen killed in Syria, local clerics said, as fighting triggered by their death continued to shake the northern port town of Tripoli.

A Reuters reporter in the area said fighting overnight killed at least one person, bringing the total to over 14 dead in a week, and more than 120 wounded.

Tensions in northern Lebanon have been high since at least 14 Sunni Muslim Lebanese and Palestinian gunmen from the area were killed by Syrian security forces a week ago in a Syrian border town. The men appeared to have joined the armed insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Militants from northern Lebanon had long been suspected of entering neighboring Syria, but the killing of the gunmen sparked tensions Tripoli's long simmering tensions.

Syria's conflict has not only stirred sectarian fighting in its own population, it has also revived sectarian clashes in Tripoli, whose communal makeup reflects that of Syria. Majority Sunnis in the city support Syria's mostly Sunni-led uprising, while Alawites, the Shi'ite-linked minority sect to which Assad belongs, are generally supportive of the Syrian president.

Syrian state television aired graphic video of the dead Lebanese gunmen, their bloodied corpses riddled with bullet holes. Families of the dead demonstrated last week to demand the return of the bodies, as clashes resumed in Tripoli.

An agreement was eventually reached between Syrian and Lebanese officials to transfer the bodies gradually, with the first three being delivered on Sunday. Cars brought the bodies up to the northern Lebanese border, where security forces and local religious authorities came to receive them.

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Italy PM Monti says he will resign when budget passed

ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti announced on Saturday that he would resign once the 2013 budget is approved, potentially bringing forward an election due early next year and fuelling speculation that he might run.

The surprise announcement came two days after Silvio Berlusconi's party withdrew parliamentary support for the technocrat government and hours after Berlusconi said he would run to become premier for a fifth time on a platform that attacks Monti's stewardship of the economy.

Parliament is already poised to pass the budget by Christmas, and so Monti's resignation probably brings the expected vote forward by no more than a month to February. Elections must follow no more than 70 days after President Giorgio Napolitano dissolves parliament.

Monti's move turns the tables on Berlusconi, who seemed to have once again seized a political opportunity to keep his party in the political game just a year after being forced to resign amid a sex scandal and a debt crisis.

Berlusconi could now be forced into an election earlier than he expected with his badly divided party trailing in opinion polls behind the centre-left and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of the comic Beppe Grillo.

Monti's announcement will also increase speculation that he could be eyeing a run as a candidate in the election himself although he has yet to make any clear statement.

At a conference in France earlier, Monti, a former European commissioner who is widely credited with restoring Italy's international credibility after the scandal-plagued Berlusconi era, appeared to take aim at Berlusconi, warning against "populism".

He said Italy should not go back to where it was when he took over for Berlusconi a year ago.
Following a two-hour meeting with Napolitano, he warned that not approving the budget "would render more serious the government crisis, also at a European level," and said that after it is approved, his resignation would be "irrevocable".

Leaders of both Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which is leading in the opinion polls, said they were willing to accelerate the passage of the budget.

"Faced with the irresponsibility of the right that betrayed a commitment it made a year ago before the whole country... Monti responded with an act of dignity that we profoundly respect," said PD leader Pier Luigi Bersani.

"We are ready to approve the budget in the fastest possible manner," he said in a statement.

"RECESSIVE SPIRAL"

Italians will vote in the middle of a severe economic crisis, with a recession that began mid-way through last year showing no signs of abating, a massive public debt and unemployment at 11.1 percent, a record high.

With the support of a cross-party alliance including both the PD and the PDL, Monti imposed tax hikes and spending cuts to bring borrowing costs under control and undertook a series of reforms to improve the competitiveness of the economy.

But Berlusconi said on Wednesday that the former economics professor's austerity policies had left Italy facing a "recessive spiral without end".

The PDL withdrew parliamentary support for Monti on Thursday, driving up the difference between German and Italian benchmark bonds by about 30 basis points.

"On Monday morning the markets will judge this latest outburst by Berlusconi and they certainly will not judge it positively," PD vice president Enrico Letta commented. Letta added that elections now were likely in February.

Berlusconi's centre-right PDL lags the PD by at least 16 percentage points in opinion polls, and also trails the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which has surged to prominence on a tide of public anger against the mainstream political class.

Monti's move will fuel speculation over whether he intends to run to lead the country next year once he has resigned. So far he has said he will step in only if the election result is unclear, but there has been growing speculation he could join forces with a centrist group.

Financial markets have been closely watching the political upheaval in Italy and many in the business establishment have hoped for a second term from Monti.

However Berlusconi, Italy's most proved election campaigner, said that he would not give in easily.

"I race to win," Berlusconi told reporters at the practice field for AC Milan, the soccer club he controls.

"To win, everyone said there had to be a tested leader. It's not that we did not look for one. We did, and how! But there isn't one... I'm doing it out of a sense of responsibility."

The media magnate has ample resources to back his bid - the country's biggest television network, its biggest magazine publisher and a family-owned newspaper.

Echoing comments by the leader of the 5-Star Movement, Beppe Grillo, Berlusconi criticized the single currency earlier this year and has slammed Germany's influence on European policy.

In his blog, Grillo said Berlusconi is running for office because he knows the average Italian "is literally terrified about the prospects of five more years of Monti-like rule".

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U.S. drone strike kills another al Qaeda commander in Pakistan

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone attack killed a senior al Qaeda commander in Pakistan's northwest on Sunday, military intelligence officials said, the second militant leader to be killed in strikes by the unmanned aircraft in three days.

The attack killed Mohammad Ahmed Almansoor and three others in a village close to Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border.

The drone fired missiles at a house with Almansoor inside, destroying two rooms and a car. Four drones were seen flying over the area during the attack, residents and government officials said.

A similar attack on Thursday in North Waziristan killed another senior al Qaeda commander, Abu Zaid, who replaced Abu Yahya al-Libi as one of the militant Islamist group's most powerful figures, intelligence sources said. A U.S. drone attack also killed Libi in June.

Unmanned aerial attacks have crushed al Qaeda's network along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan but have drawn trenchant criticism in the two countries.

Al Qaeda has been weakened steadily in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the killing of Osama bin Laden in a raid by U.S. special forces on a Pakistani garrison town in May 2011.

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