A longtime loyalist of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was elected Pakistan’s new prime minister Monday and immediately freed judges detained by President Pervez Musharraf. The release of the judges was a powerful symbol of Musharraf’s slipping authority since Bhutto’s party swept parliamentary elections last month. The newly elected prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, will form a new government dominated by Musharraf’s foes, who have vowed to slash the U.S.-backed president’s sweeping powers and review his counterterrorism policies.
Senators from both parties on Sunday urged the Department of Justice to investigate the unauthorized searches of the passport files of three presidential candidates by State Department contract workers. “That kind of a breach of privacy is just despicable,” said Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I think that ought to be a very intense investigation.” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., agreed, saying the incidents seem to point to a broader problem.
A political party seen as the more royalist of two groups seeking power swept the first parliamentary elections ever held in the secluded Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the country’s election commissioner said Monday. The Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party took 44 of the 47 seats in the new parliament, Election Commissioner Kunzang Wangdi said. The People’s Democratic Party won the remaining three seats. Turnout was slightly more than 79 percent of the 320,000 registered voters, Wangdi said. Even in remote corners of the largely rural country – in tiny hamlets where voting machines were delivered by yak – the election went smoothly, officials said.\nAfghan and NATO forces killed more than 40 insurgents in an air and ground battle in southern Afghanistan, a security official said Sunday. Separately, two soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition died after hitting a roadside bomb. Troops seized dozens of weapons – including rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns – after Saturday’s battle in Dihrawud, a district in Uruzgan province, the Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement. It said many militants were killed, including a commander, but provided no figures.
Osama bin Laden’s deputy urged Muslims on Monday to attack Jewish and American targets worldwide in retaliation for Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip, intensifying an al-Qaida push to use Arab anger to rally support for the terror network. The tape by Ayman al-Zawahri came just days after two messages from bin Laden, who called for a holy war on behalf of the Palestinians and warned of a “severe” reaction against Europe over the republishing of newspaper cartoons seen as insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
