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TOP STORIES
*	Powell says he's finally given up hope of getting Indian troops, but hopes other countries will contribute
	Sept 28, New York -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that the United States has given up hope of getting Indian soldiers to help coalition forces secure Iraq, but said he was optimistic countries would contribute troops after a U.N. resolution. ``The Indians, they have indicated they would not be in a position to provide troops. And I don't expect that position to change,' Powell said in an interview on the television news channel CNN. Powell said he was disappointed with New Delhi's decision but ``it's become clear in recent months that, for a variety of reasons, internal political domestic politics, the Indians would not be in a position to provide troops.'

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_9dd30009da5baca1
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030928_000748-search,00.html
	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ASep28.html
	http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq-Troops.html
*	No peace, now no peacekeepers
	Sept 28, Baghdad -- The decision by the Bush administration to seek Turkish, Indian and Pakistani troops for peacekeeping in Iraq has reached what many Iraqi political figures knew from the outset would be its final destination: the department of ideas whose time has not come. "We do not want Turkish troops in Iraq," said a Kurdish member of Iraq's Governing Council last week. His sentiments were shared not only by fellow Kurds, whose frustrated national ambitions make for relations of mutual mistrust with the Turks. Some non-Kurdish members of the council also wonder how Iraq's other neighbors, particularly Iran, might react if Turkey got even a toehold in the territory of their oil-rich neighbor.

	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/weekinreview/28TYLE.html
*	Pakistan democracy leader Khan dies at 85
	Sept 27, Islamabad -- The head of Pakistan's main opposition alliance and one of its greatest democracy advocates has died, his party's spokesman said Saturday. He was 85 years old. Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan died late Friday of a heart attack, spokesman Jamshed Khan told The Associated Press. Khan was admitted to a hospital in Islamabad on Tuesday after he complained of chest pain during a meeting of party leaders. Khan's career spanned half a century and saw him take on several of Pakistan's military dictatorships.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_c7300006bd2b1964
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030927_000075,00.html
	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8745-2003Sep27.html
*	Thousands attend funeral of Pakistan democracy activist
	Sept 28, Multan, Pakistan -- One of Pakistan's greatest democracy advocates was buried on Sunday, mourned by more than 15,000 people, including government leaders and colleagues from the country's main opposition alliance. Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, who headed the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, died late Friday of a heart attack. He was 85 years old. The funeral was held in Khan Garh, the town in central Pakistan where he was born, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) west of Multan. Mourners wept freely and most shops were closed to honor his death.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_76330002f9d71dad
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030928_000629,00.html
*	Pakistan judge sets Oct. 11 for final arguments in alleged assassination case
	Sept 27, Karachi, Pakistan -- Prosecutors said Saturday that they'll seek the maximum sentence of life in prison for four suspected Islamic militants and a paramilitary soldier charged in a plot to assassinate Pakistan's president. ``We will prove that the defendants wanted to kill (President Gen. Pervez) Musharraf,' said prosecutor Maula Bakhsh Bhatti. The five men have been charged with planning to kill Musharraf on April 26, 2002, while he was visiting the southern port city of Karachi.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_50f70005809ae507
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030927_000125,00.html
*	Soldiers kill 14 Maoist rebels in gunbattle in Nepal
	Sept 27, Katmandu -- Nepalese soldiers killed at least 14 Maoist rebels in scattered fighting Saturday, the Defense Ministry said. Troops killed 12 rebels near Chitapokhari village in Khotang district in a gunbattle that also claimed the life of one soldier. The area is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of the capital, Katmandu. Two more rebels were reportedly killed in clashes with the army in nearby Baseri village. Nearly 200 government troops, rebels and civilians have been killed since the rebels withdrew from a seven-month cease-fire last month and began attacking government and civilian targets.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_3ddcb9
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030927_000156,00.html
	http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-briefs28.1sep28,1,6217435.story
*	Six injured in land mine explosion in Pakistani tribal region
	Sept 28, Quetta, Pakistan -- A pickup truck hit a land mine in a tribal region in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, injuring all six people in the vehicle, police said Sunday. Nobody claimed responsibility for the mine which exploded Saturday in Sui, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of Quetta, the provincial capital, said Allah Wasaya, a local police official. Mine explosions are common in the area and authorities say local tribesmen may be involved. Last month, one paramilitary soldier was killed and six others were wounded in the area when a land mine blew up their jeep.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_247200015a3cad3c
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030928_000586,00.html
*	Bomb explodes on Pakistan bus, wounding at least 10
	Sept 27, Karachi, Pakistan -- A bomb exploded on a bus in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi on Saturday, wounding at least 10 people, a senior police official said. The blast badly damaged the bus, which was carrying at least 30 people as it moved through the city's business district, said Zulifqar Ali, a spokesman for the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan's main emergency relief agency. At least three of the wounded were in critical condition, the foundation said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and police said they have no information on who was behind it.

	http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/-pakistan-bus_x.htm
	http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/sns-ap-pakistan-bus-explosion,0,2627746.story
	http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V4337.AP-Pakistan-Bus-Ex.html
	http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/breaking_news/6876597.htm
	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9743-2003Sep27.html
*	Qaeda leader urges Pakistanis to oust Musharraf
	Sept 28, Dubai -- Arabic satellite television broadcast on Sunday an audio tape purporting to come from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in which he urged Pakistanis to overthrow President Pervez Musharraf for "betraying" Islam. The speaker on the tape, aired by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya channels, also urged Muslims around the world to fight what Zawahri called the Christian-Zionist crusade "aimed at eradicating Islam and Muslims." It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the tape, which appeared to be recent because it blasted India for hosting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon earlier this month.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ASep28.html
	http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-qaeda-tape.html
*	On the trail of Daniel Pearl
	A new book suggests Pakistani officials may have had a role in the reporter's death. Sept 27 -- Pakistan’s government has recently had to contend with charges that its military and intelligence services continue to aid the Taliban, and also that it may have exported nuclear technology to North Korea. Now, celebrated French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy has suggested that even the plot to murder American journalist Danny Pearl may have reached the upper tiers of government in Islamabad. Pearl's murder has never quite been solved. Since the Wall Street Journal reporter was abducted and executed in Karachi in January 2002, four men with ties to radical Islamist groups have been convicted of the crime by a Pakistani court. The suspected ringleader, a British citizen named Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, has been sentenced to death, while the other three are serving 25-year terms. But several other alleged accomplices remain at large, and the man who may have slashed Pearl's throat — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top Qaeda operative who recently revealed to U.S. authorities fresh details about the Sept. 11 attacks — is being held incommunicado.

	http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,490640,00.html
*	Fighting in Kashmir revives rancor in Pakistan and India
	Sept 27, New Delhi -- Speaking this week to the United Nations General Assembly, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said that India was fueling an arms race that would "destabilize South Asia." The next day, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India accused Pakistan of trying to use "terrorism" to "blackmail" India into making concessions.

	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/international/asia/28KASHhtml
*	Bangladesh, India to discuss sharing river water
	Sept 28, Dhaka -- India's proposal to divert water from rivers which also pass through Bangladesh was among top issues likely surface at a meeting between Cabinet ministers from the neighboring countries, officials said Sunday. Bangladesh Water Resources Minister Hafizuddin Ahmed and his Indian counterpart, Arjun Charan Sethi, were also expected to discuss an accord over sharing water from rivers that run through both nations. The two water ministers were set to meet in the Indian capital, New Delhi, on Monday and Tuesday.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_5c5c0002eb5176ec
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030928_000627,00.html
*	Bangladesh, though friendly to United States, remains firmly against sending peacekeepers to Iraq
	Sept 27, Dhaka -- Analysts and newspapers have hailed Bangladesh's strong position against sending peacekeeping troops to Iraq, saying the decision is consistent with the South Asian country's earlier stance against the U.S. invasion. The United States has been trying to get other countries especially Muslim ones involved in keeping the peace in Iraq, and U.S. officials reportedly had considered Bangladesh a possible candidate because of its moderate Muslim tradition. Bangladesh also is a frequent contributor to U.N. peacekeeping efforts. Its soldiers volunteer in the thousands for such missions for a chance to earn extra money. The government recently pledged to send nearly 5,000 peacekeepers to Liberia.

	http://www.boston.com/dailynews/270/world/Bangladesh_though_friendly_to_:.shtml
	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8743-2003Sep27.html
*	Ansar Mahmood's American Dream
	Sept 28, Buffalo -- The photograph shows the niece he has never met bundled into a red jumper and chasing a ball. But all Ansar Mahmood sees is the ground shifting around her: cracks in the cement wall, damp floor, rusting water heater, a bicycle missing a spoke, all the repairs left undone while he's stuck in this jail. Nineteen months in the Buffalo Federal Detention Center, long enough to give his baby face edges and to earn him this dubious national record: Mahmood may be the last person detained on immigration charges in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks who is still in jail, fighting deportation.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ASep27.html
*	Stalemate in India's troubled Northeast
	Sept 28, Guwahti, India -- At 21, Sunil Nath was an idealistic rebel fighting Indian troops. Twenty years later he has become a businessman disillusioned with a cause he feels has become corrupt yet still waiting for a peace that may never come. Nath offers a rare and frank insight into the minds of the men who joined dozens of separatist insurgencies in India's troubled Northeast, but who appear no closer either to victory or settlement with the government. Today, he has business interests ranging from coal to construction, a taste for whiskey and a passion for the film "Braveheart" on Scots independence warrior William Wallace.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ASep28.html
*	Canada says 9 detained no longer a risk
	Sept 26, Toronto, Canada -- At least nine of 21 men from Pakistan and India who were detained last month on suspicion of possible terrorism links are no longer considered security risks, an immigration official said Friday. At hearings this week before an immigration and refugee panel, government lawyers said the nine men were being investigated only for alleged immigration violations. No information has been released on 10 other cases, indicating the suspects may have filed for refugee status, similar to political asylum in the United States. Hearings are scheduled in the remaining two cases of what police call Project Thread.

	http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-canada-immigration-arrests,0,5637652.story
	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5582-2003Sep26.html
*	In Sri Lanka, a call to arms
	Sept 28, Valaichchenai, Sri Lanka -- On Fridays after dusk, groups of young Muslim men gather in the palm-fringed garden of the town's main mosque. Once they talked about work or played carom — the local version of pool — in an adjoining room of the 80-year-old mosque. But these days, they talk about how to counter the growing power of ethnic Tamil rebels in the eastern part of this island nation off India's southern tip. After nearly two decades of civil war, the government and the rebels struck a deal last year to grant limited self-rule to Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. And police intelligence reports say Muslim extremists are slowly prevailing upon their previously quiet community to prepare for armed resistance.

	http://www.latimes.com/la-adfg-srilanka28sep28,1,6142904.story
*	European truce monitors want more access to Sri Lankan rebel strongholds
	Sept 28, Colombo -- European officials overseeing a government-rebel truce in Sri Lanka said they've asked Tamil Tiger guerrilla leaders for more access to the rebels' strongholds, complaining that they've been hampered in their duties as cease-fire monitors. Chief monitor Tryggve Tellefsen and two other officers — all Norwegians — flew Sunday to the rebel-held northern town of Kilinochchi for a meeting with the rebels' political wing leader, S.P. Thamilselvan and other Tamil Tiger leaders.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_803400038e61a552
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030928_000623,00.html
*	British officials discuss human rights with Sri Lanka's Tamil rebels
	Sept 27, Colombo -- A group of British Embassy officials visited Sri Lanka's volatile east and met with Tamil Tiger rebels to discuss allegations of human rights abuses, the leader of the group said Saturday. Margaret Tongue said they held ``useful' talks on Friday with Bawa, the rebels' political leader, in Ampara, 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of Colombo. Bawa uses only one name. They discussed allegations that the rebels have levied illegal taxes, recruited child soldiers and killed political opponents, a report on the TamilNet Web site said.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_87eb0007d43ec242
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030927_000069,00.html

OTHER STORIES
*	Commonwealth upholds Pakistan's suspension from decision-making councils
	Sept 27, New York -- Foreign ministers of the Commonwealth nations decided Saturday to maintain Pakistan's suspension from the 54-nation group's decision-making councils. Repeated deadlocks between the government and opposition in Pakistan made it clear more needed to be done toward restoring democracy, the Commonwealth ministers said in a statement after their two-day meeting in New York. The grouping of Britain and its former colonies suspended Pakistan from its decision-making councils following the military coup in 1999 led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, now the country's president.
	http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/09/27/national2109EDT0618.DTL

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ASep27.html

*	Elton John remembers slain reporter Pearl
	Sept 27, New York -- Elton John is appearing in a public service announcement on television and radio promoting next month's Daniel Pearl Music Day. "Join me and thousands of music lovers around the world carrying on his mission of connecting people through words and music," the 56-year-old singer says. "Participate in Daniel Pearl Day promoting harmony for humanity." Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in February 2002. He also was a violinist, fiddler and mandolin player.
	http://www.nynewsday.com/entertainment/sns-ap-people-john,0,1032748.story?coll=nyc-ent-short-navigation

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9016-2003Sep27.html

*	Remembering Danny Pearl
	Sept 28 -- After 9/11, and before the American military rolled through Iraq, the Western world was transfixed by the kidnapping and execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. Perhaps it shouldn't have shocked us, after the horror of the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., but it did. The assassination of a man armed only with a notepad was a crime against anyone who pursued understanding of the passions that inflame the Middle East and southern Asia. It was a crime that grieved us the more we learned about Pearl; about his relentless good cheer; his determination to do his job with excellence; about the unborn son who would never know his father.
	http://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/.xml

*	Librarian Althea Lazenby found adventure in India
	Sept 27, Hartwell -- Retired teacher and librarian Althea Louise Heard Lazenby and her husband, Henry, loved to travel. They met during World War II in India, where she served with the American Red Cross and he with the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps. They spent a memorable 50th wedding anniversary in India. Mr. Lazenby equated their marriage with their travels. "Our marriage has been a great trip," he said. "She was like my mother in that she always told me what to do in the right way." Mrs. Lazenby died Thursday at Hospice of Cincinnati in Blue Ash. A resident of the Evergreen Retirement Community in Hartwell, she was 84.
	http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/09/27/loc_otherobit271.html

*	Expert raises Nepalese hackles over Yeti
	Sept 26, Kathmandu -- A Japanese expert on Himalayan languages, who insists the yeti was simply a case of linguistic mistaken identity, has raised the hackles of many Nepalese. Dr. Matako Nabuka is a researcher and mountaineer who spent 12 years in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan conducting, he told the BBC, research into the elusive abominable snowman. Hackles began to rise in Kathmandu earlier this month when Nabuka told a press conference that yetis were not mysterious apes or hairy hominids living in the high Himalayas.
	http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/r.htm

*	Immigrant in a stifling society dares to let herself take a breath
	Sept 28 -- There are no yellow bricks in the cramped London neighborhood Monica Ali evokes in her debut novel. Populated almost entirely by Bangladeshi immigrants, "Brick Lane" is almost a province of that Southeast Asian country. The street smells of rubbish and boiled rice. Moving to London, its denizens assumed life would be better. Instead, they have re-created the squalor and provinciality of home. No one knows this better than Ali's shy, wonderfully dreamy narrator, Nazneen, a woman born in 1967, when Bangladesh was East Pakistan, then brought to London at age 18 for an arranged marriage. Tucked away in an apartment complex called Tower Hamlets, she becomes the wife to a harrumphing, self-important man named Chanu. He eats noisily and nurses grudges against those who get promotions ahead of him. Between bites of dal, he lectures his wife on race, ethnicity and class.
	http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/.xml

*	The scariest action movies around
	Sept 28 -- At the beginning of Michael Winterbottom's "In This World," two young Afghans, Jamal and Enayat, leave the refugee camp in Pakistan where they have lived most of their lives and set off on a perilous overland journey to London. The movie emphasizes the danger and frustration of their trip, which only one of them completes — shady traffickers, harsh weather, unsympathetic soldiers and border guards, as well as traveling conditions that range from the uncomfortable to the potentially deadly — and also the terrifying loneliness of being uprooted in a world that, when it is not indifferent to their fates, often seems actively hostile.
	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/movies/28SCOT.html

*	Clay Berry, Bikas Joshi
	Sept 28 -- Elizabeth Clay Berry, the daughter of Mary and John M. Berry of Alexandria, Va., was married yesterday to Bikas Joshi, the son of Shakuntala Joshi and Basu Deb Ram Joshi of Kathmandu, Nepal. Michael Berry, who is the bride's brother and a Universal Life minister, officiated at the family's vacation house in Randolph, N.H. The bride, 32, and the bridegroom, 29, are economists in Washington, she at the Treasury Department, he at the International Monetary Fund.
	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/fashion/weddings/28BERR.html