No end to Syria war if sides refuse to talk: envoy

AZAZ, Syria/CAIRO (Reuters) - The international peace negotiator for Syria pleaded with outside countries on Sunday to push the warring parties to the table for talks, warning that the country would become a failed state ruled by warlords unless diplomacy is given a chance.

Lakhdar Brahimi, who inherited the seemingly impossible task of bringing an end to the war after his predecessor Kofi Annan resigned in frustration in July, has launched an intensified diplomatic campaign to win backing for a peace plan.

He spent five days this week in Damascus, where he met President Bashar al-Assad. On Saturday he visited Assad's main international backers in Moscow, and on Sunday he travelled to Cairo, where President Mohamed Mursi has emerged as one of Assad's most vocal Arab opponents.

"The problem is that both sides aren't speaking to one another," he said. "This is where help is needed from outside."

Brahimi's peace plan - inherited from Annan and agreed to in principle in Geneva in June by countries that both oppose and support Assad - has the seemingly fatal flaw of making no mention of whether Assad would leave power.

The Syrian leader's opponents - who have seized much of the north and east of the country in the past six months - say they will not cease fire or join any talks unless Assad goes and have largely dismissed Brahimi's initiative.

But Brahimi says the plan is the only one on the table, and predicts "hell" if countries do not push both sides to talk.

"The situation in Syria is bad, very, very bad, and it is getting worse, and the pace of deterioration is increasing," Brahimi told reporters.

"People are talking about Syria being split into a number of small states ... This is not what will happen. What will happen is Somalization: warlords." Somalia has been without effective central government since civil war broke out there in 1991.

More than 45,000 people have been killed in Syria's 21-month war, the longest and deadliest of the revolts that began sweeping the Arab world two years ago.

The rebels are mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, fighting against Assad, a member of the Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect, giving the war a dangerous sectarian dimension.

The rebels increasingly believe that their military successes of the past half year are bringing victory within reach. But Assad's forces still hold the densely-populated southwest of the country, the main north-south highway and the Mediterranean coast in the northwest.

The government also holds airbases scattered throughout the country, and has an arsenal including jets, helicopters, missiles and artillery that the fighters cannot match.

ASSAD FORCES SEIZE HOMS DISTRICT

Government troops scored a victory on Saturday after several days of fighting, seizing a Sunni district in Homs, a central town that controls the vital road linking Damascus to the coast.

Opposition activists said on Sunday that many people had been killed in the Deir Baalbeh district after it was captured, although it was not immediately possible to verify claims that a "massacre" had taken place. The opposition Syrian Network for Human Rights said it documented the summary execution of 17 men.

"They were young and old, mostly refugees who had fled to Deir Baalbeh from central parts of Homs," it said in a statement. Footage taken by activists showed the bodies of eight men with what appeared to be bullet wounds in the face and head.

With severe restrictions by Syrian authorities on independent media in place since the revolt broke out in March last year, the footage could not be confirmed.

Najati Tayyara, a veteran opposition campaigner from Homs in contact with the city, told Reuters residents believed the death toll was as high as 260, although the area was sealed off by government forces and allied militia.

"I am afraid that we have seen a massacre in Deir Baalbeh and a military setback for the rebels because of their lack of organization. They have been in need of ammunition for a long time and it finally ran out," he said.

"Communications are difficult and we are trying to piece together what happened in Deir Baalbeh. We so far know that regime forces went in after the rebels retreated and summarily executed dozens of people, including civilians."

Tayyara said the fall of Deir Baalbeh undermined supply lines to rebel held areas inside the city.

Bilal al-Homsi, an opposition activist in Old Homs, said MiG warplanes bombarded the area overnight and medium range rockets and hit the area of al-Khalidiya, a rebel-held Sunni district.

In the north, opposition activists said fighters had surrounded an air defense base near Aleppo airport, south of the contested city. Fighting raged in the area and warplanes bombed rebel positions near the base to try and break the siege.

In the northern city of Azaz, where activists said 11 people were killed when air strikes destroyed six homes, gravediggers were already digging graves for whichever victims will be next.

"We know the plane is coming to hit us, so we're being prepared," said Abu Sulaiman, one of a few men digging at the Sheikh Saad cemetery.

"Massacres are happening. We're putting every two or three bodies together. We've been working and digging since 6 in the morning. We're going to dig 10 new graves today," he said.

"We're preparing them. Maybe we'll be buried in them."

Fida, a 15-year-old girl in a green scarf and purple coat looked on as her father shoveled dirt from the gravesite. The dead from the previous day's attacks included friends she recognized when their shrouds were pulled back.

"Yesterday was the first time I uncovered blankets to discover that my friends had died," she said, as young children near the cemetery played hopscotch on the streets and kicked stones about.

"I was just about to go visit them about a half hour before the strike hit," she said. "In the end I visited them when they were dead."

(Adiditional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Ayman Samir and Tom Perry in Cairo and Peter Graff in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

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Chavez suffers new post-surgery complications

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is suffering more complications linked to a respiratory infection that hit him after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba, his vice president said in a somber broadcast on Sunday.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba to visit Chavez in the hospital as supporters' fears grew for the ailing 58-year-old socialist leader, who has not been seen in public nor heard from in three weeks.

Chavez had already suffered unexpected bleeding caused by the six-hour operation on December 11 for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area. Officials said doctors then had to fight a respiratory infection.

"Just a few minutes ago we were with President Chavez. He greeted us and he himself talked about these complications," Maduro said in the broadcast, adding that the third set of complications arose because of the respiratory infection.

"Thanks to his physical and spiritual strength, Comandante Chavez is confronting this difficult situation."

Maduro, flanked by his wife Attorney-General Cilia Flores, Chavez's daughter Rosa Virginia and her husband, Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, said he would remain in Havana while Chavez's condition evolved.

He said Chavez's condition remained "delicate" - a term he has used since the day after the surgery, when he warned Venezuelans to prepare for difficult times and urged them to keep the president in their prayers.

"We trust that the avalanche of love and solidarity with Comandante Chavez, together with his immense will to live and the care of the best medical specialists, will help our president win this new battle," Maduro said.

A senior government official in Caracas said the New Year's Eve party in the capital's central Plaza Bolivar had been canceled. "Everyone pray for strength for our comandante to overcome this difficult moment," the official, Jacqueline Faria, added on Twitter after making the announcement.

OIL-FINANCED SOCIALISM

Chavez's resignation for health reasons, or his death, would upend politics in the OPEC nation where his personalized brand of oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor but a pariah to critics who call him a dictator.

His condition is being closely watched around Latin America, especially in other nations run by leftist governments, from Cuba to Bolivia, which depend on subsidized fuel shipments and other aid from Venezuela for their fragile economies.

Chavez has not provided details of the cancer that was first diagnosed in June 2011, leading to speculation among Venezuela's 29 million people and criticism from opposition leaders.

Chavez's allies have openly discussed the possibility that he may not be able to return to Venezuela to be inaugurated for his third six-year term as president on the constitutionally mandated date of January 10.

Senior "Chavista" officials have said the people's wishes were made clear when the president was re-elected in October, and that the constitution makes no provision for what happens if a president-elect cannot take office on January 10.

Opposition leaders say any postponement would be just the latest sign that Chavez is not in a fit state to govern and that new elections should be called to choose his replacement. If Chavez had to step down, new elections would be called within 30 days.

Opposition figures believe they have a better shot against Maduro, who was named earlier this month by Chavez as his heir apparent, than against the charismatic president who for 14 years has been nearly invincible at the ballot box.

Any constitutional dispute over succession could lead to a messy transition toward a post-Chavez era in the country that boasts the biggest oil reserves in the world.

Maduro has become the face of the government in Chavez's absence, imitating the president's bombastic style and sharp criticism of the United States and its "imperialist" policies.

In Sunday's broadcast, Maduro said Chavez sent New Year greetings to all Venezuelans, "especially the children, whom he carries in his heart always."

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Mario Naranjo; Editng by Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)

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Al Qaeda in Yemen offers bounty for U.S. ambassador

DUBAI (Reuters) - The Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda has offered a bounty for anyone who kills the U.S. ambassador to Yemen or an American soldier in the impoverished Arab state, a group that monitors Islamist websites said.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said it was offering three kilograms of gold for the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Sanaa, Gerald Feierstein, the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said, citing an audio released by militants.

AQAP will also pay 5 million rials ($23,350) to whoever kills any American soldier in Yemen, it said.

The offer, valid for six months, was made "to encourage our Muslim Ummah (nation), and to expand the circle of the jihad (holy war) by the masses," SITE said, citing the audio.

AQAP, mostly militants from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, is regarded by the United States as the most dangerous branch of the network founded by Osama bin Laden.

In September, AQAP urged Muslims to step up protests and kill U.S. diplomats in Muslim countries over a film denigrating the Prophet Mohammad, which it said was another chapter in the "crusader wars" against Islam.

The film provoked an outcry among Muslims, who deem any depiction of the Prophet as blasphemous and triggered violent attacks on embassies in countries in Asia and the Middle East.

Four U.S. officials including the ambassador to Libya were killed in the aftermath. The Pentagon said it had sent a platoon of Marines to Yemen after demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa.

A U.S. ally, Yemen is struggling against challenges on many fronts since mass protests forced veteran leader Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down in February after decades in power.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government is trying to re-establish order and unify the army.

Washington, which has pursued a campaign of assassination by drone and missile against suspected al Qaeda members, backed a military offensive in May to recapture areas of Abyan province. But militants have struck back with a series of bombings and killings.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; editing by Todd Eastham)

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In Indian student's gang rape, murder, two worlds collide

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - One of hundreds of attacks reported in New Delhi each year, the brutal gang rape and murder of a young medical student in a private bus this month caught authorities and political parties flat-footed, slow to appreciate it had become symbolic of all the others.

In the moments before the December 16 attack, the 23-year-old woman from India's urban middle class, who had recently qualified as a trainee physiotherapist in a private Delhi hospital, and her male friend, a software engineer, were walking home from a cinema at a shopping mall in south Delhi, according to a police reconstruction of events.

A bus, part of a fleet of privately owned vehicles used as public transport across the city of 16 million, and known as India's "rape capital", was at the same time heading toward them. Earlier that day, it had ferried school students but was now empty except for five men and a teenage boy, including its crew, police said. Most of the men were from the city's slums.

One of the six - all now charged with murder - lured the couple onto the bus, promising to drop the woman home, police have said, quoting from an initial statement that she gave from her hospital bed before her condition deteriorated rapidly.

A few minutes into the ride, her friend, 28, grew suspicious when the bus deviated from the supposed route and the men locked the door, according to her statement. They then taunted her for being out with a man late at night, prompting the friend to intervene and provoking an initial scuffle.

The attackers then beat him with a metal rod, knocking him unconscious, before turning on the woman who had tried to come to his defense. Police say the men admitted after their arrest to torturing and raping the student "to teach her a lesson".

At one point, the bus driver gave the wheel to another of the accused and dragged the woman by the neck to the back of the vehicle and forced himself upon her. The other five then took turns raping her and also driving the bus, keeping it circling through the busy streets of India's capital city, police said.

The woman was raped for nearly an hour before the men pushed a metal rod inside her, severely damaging her internal organs, and then dumped both her and her friend on the roadside, 8 km (5 miles) from where they had boarded it, police said.

Robbed of their clothes and belongings, they were found half naked, bleeding and unconscious later that night by a passerby, who alerted the police.

FAMILY ROLE MODEL

The woman, whose identity has been withheld by police, gave her statement to a sub-divisional magistrate on December 21 in the intensive care unit of Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital, according to local media reports. She was undergoing multiple surgical procedures and her condition later began to rapidly worsen.

Ten days after the attack and still in a critical condition, she was flown to Singapore for specialist treatment. She died in Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital two days later. Her body was flown back to Delhi and cremated there on Sunday in a private ceremony.

Family members who had accompanied her to Singapore declined to speak to reporters, but relatives told the Times of India newspaper she had been a role model to her two younger brothers.

Unlike most traditional Indian families who only send their sons to fee-paying colleges or universities, her parents pinned their hopes on the daughter and took loans to fund her studies.

She was born and brought up in a middle class Delhi neighborhood after her family moved to the city more than 20 years ago from India's northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Her male friend recorded his statement to a local court days after the attack and helped police identify the six accused. He left for his hometown in Uttar Pradesh late on Saturday, missing the woman's funeral, local media reported.

SHAME, ANGER IN SLUM

Four of the accused, all in custody, live in the narrow by-lanes of Ravi Das Camp, a slum about 17 km (11 miles) from the woman's home in southwest Delhi. Inside the slum - home to some 1,200 people who eke out a meager living as rickshaw pullers and tea hawkers - many demanded the death penalty for the accused.

"The incident has really shocked all of us. I don't know how I will get my children admitted to a school. The incident has earned a bad name to this place," said Pooja Kumari, a neighbor of one of the accused.

Girija Shankar, a student, said: "Our heads hang in shame because of the brutal act of these men. They must reap what they have sown."

The house of one of the accused was locked, with neighbors saying his family had left the city to escape the shame and anger. Meena, a 45-year-old neighbor, said she had wanted to join the protests that followed the rape, but was too scared.

"You never know when a mob may attack this slum and attack our houses. But we want to say we're as angry as the entire nation. We want them to be hanged," she said.

Two of the six alleged assailants come from outside Delhi, according to police. One is married with children and was arrested in his native village in Bihar state and the other, a juvenile, is a runaway from a broken home in Uttar Pradesh.

In India, murder is punishable by death by hanging, except in the case of offenders aged below 18.

(Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Ian Geoghegan)

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Syria doomed to "hell" without political deal: envoy

MOSCOW/AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - The international mediator touting a peace plan for Syria warned on Saturday of "hell" if the warring sides shun talks, and Moscow accused enemies of President Bashar al-Assad of blocking negotiations.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said in Moscow that responsible people inside and outside Syria should "help the Syrians stop their descent into more and more bloodshed, into more and more chaos and perhaps a failed state".

Efforts to find a negotiated solution to a 21-month-old war that has killed some 45,000 people have floundered, with the opposition, buoyed by rebel military advances, demanding that Assad be excluded from power before any talks can proceed.

In a sign that the war may not quickly be won, government forces - in retreat for much of the past few months - scored a victory in the strategically important central city of Homs, where they pushed rebels from a district after days of fighting.

But in the north, Syria's national airline had to cancel a flight from Cairo to Aleppo, according to Egyptian airline officials, due to insecurity at an airport that rebels have declared as a target and where explosions were heard overnight.

Brahimi spent five days in Damascus this week as part of a push to promote a months-old peace plan that calls for a transitional government, without specifying Assad's role.

"If the only alternative is really hell or a political process, then all of us must work ceaselessly for a political process," Brahimi said in Moscow. "It is difficult, it is very complicated, but there is no other choice."

Western and some Arab states that back the revolt are hoping that Russia, Assad's main international protector and arms supplier, will drop its support.

"WRONG, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE"

They have been searching for signs that Moscow, an ally of Syria since Assad's father seized power 42 years ago, is changing its stance - so far mostly in vain.

After meeting Brahimi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov firmly repeated Moscow's position that Assad's removal cannot be a precondition for negotiations, calling the Syrian opposition's refusal to talk to Damascus a "dead end".

"When the opposition says only Assad's exit will allow it to begin a dialogue about the future of its own country, we think this is wrong, we think this is rather counterproductive," he said. "The costs of this precondition are more and more lives of Syrian citizens."

Having seized much of northern and eastern Syria over the last six months, Assad's opponents seem even less likely to accept talks with the government now than when the Geneva agreement first flopped in June.

Rebels say they expect to win the war on the ground. But if both sides intend to fight to the bitter end, the longest and deadliest war to have emerged from last year's Arab revolts may have a long time left to run its course.

Despite its setbacks, the government still has the bigger arsenal and a potent air force. It controls most of the densely populated southwest of Syria, the Mediterranean coast, most of the main north-south highway and military bases countrywide.

In Azaz, a rebel-held town in the north, Abu Badri, 38, surveyed the damage of his home two hours after it was destroyed in an airstrike. He said four children and an elderly man were among the dead. Relatives trying to salvage what they could carried out drinking glasses, a fridge and an oven.

"We'll have to find a tent to stay in near the border with Turkey. What else can we do?" he said. At least six houses were destroyed by two bombs on the town, which was just beginning to recover from earlier bombardment by Assad's forces.

Eleven people were killed according to local activist Abu Zaid, who saw new graves dug in the cemetery nearby.

Blood was spattered on the bricks that littered the area. A child's teddy bear lay in the wreckage. A bulldozer cleared the heavy rubble while young boys dug through the debris with their hands, hoping to find people still alive.

In the central city of Homs, government forces pushed insurgents from the Deir Ba'alba district after several days of fierce fighting, opposition activists said.

Homs controls the strategically vital highway linking Damascus to the Alawite heartland on the coast. There were unconfirmed reports dozens of rebel fighters had been killed, said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the British-based, pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

WEST SEEKS RUSSIAN CHANGE OF HEART

The United States and its allies hope a change of heart in Moscow could prod Assad to yield power, much as Russia's withdrawal of support for Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic heralded his downfall a decade ago.

Lavrov noted that Assad has repeatedly said he would not go, adding that Russia "does not have the ability to change this".

Brahimi's peace plan has stalled on the demand by the opposition that Assad be excluded from any transitional government, a precondition also backed by the United States, European countries and most Arab states.

Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi, repeating the most populous Arab country's public support for the rebellion, said there was "no place for the current regime in the future of Syria".

"The revolution of the Syrian people, which we support, will go forward, God willing, to realize its goals of freedom."

Most Arab states are ruled by Sunni Muslims, who form the majority in Syria and are the foundation of the revolt against Assad, a member of the Shi'ite-linked Alawite minority sect.

Brahimi's plan was formally agreed in Geneva in June by world powers, but Washington and Moscow argued from the outset over the core question of whether the plan meant Assad must go.

In Damascus, Brahimi advocated a transitional government "with all the powers of the state", but his wording did not exclude a role for Assad.

The envoy's credibility with the rebels appears to have withered. In the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, demonstrators held up banners ridiculing Brahimi with English obscenities.

"We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," the rebel chief in Aleppo province, Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, said on Friday.

Moscow has invited the main opposition leader, Moaz Alkhatib, to visit for talks, but Alkhatib rejected the invitation outright on Friday, instead demanding Lavrov apologize for Russia's support of Assad. He did, however, say he could meet Russian officials in a third country.

Brahimi said a political solution had to be based on the Geneva agreement negotiated by his predecessor, Kofi Annan, shortly before Annan quit in frustration at the divisions among veto-wielding powers on the U.N. Security Council.

"There may be one or two little adjustments to make here and there, but it is a reasonable basis for a political process that will help the Syrian people," Brahimi said of the Geneva plan.

Brahimi is to meet senior U.S. and Russian diplomats together in the coming weeks. Two such meetings this month produced no signs of a breakthrough.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff and Dominic Evans in Beirut, Steve Gutterman in Moscow and Tom Perry in Cairo; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Body of India rape victim arrives home in New Delhi

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The body of a woman whose gang rape provoked protests and rare national debate about violence against women in India arrived back in New Delhi early on Sunday and was quickly cremated at a private ceremony.

The unidentified 23-year-old medical student died from her injuries on Saturday, prompting promises of action from a government that has struggled to respond to public outrage.

She had suffered brain injuries and massive internal injuries in the attack on December 16, and died in hospital in Singapore where she had been taken for treatment.

She and a male friend had been returning home from the cinema, media reports say, when six men on a bus beat them with metal rods and repeatedly raped the woman. The friend survived.

Six suspects were charged with murder after her death.

A Reuters correspondent saw family members who had been with her in Singapore take her body from the airport to their Delhi home in an ambulance with a police escort.

Ruling party leader Sonia Gandhi was seen arriving at the airport when the plane landed and Prime Minister Mannmohan Singh's convoy was also there, the witness said.

The body was then taken to a crematorium and cremated. Media were kept away but a Reuters witness saw the woman's family, New Delhi's chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, and the junior home minister, R P N Singh, coming out of the crematorium.

Security in the capital remained tight after authorities, worried about the reaction to the news of her death, had on Saturday deployed thousands of policemen and closed some roads and metro stations.

Protesters still gathered, in New Delhi and other cities, to keep the pressure on Singh's government to get tougher on crime against women. Last weekend, protesters fought pitched battles with police.

On Sunday, lines of policemen in riot gear and armed with heavy wooden sticks stood in front of metal barricades closing off roads in New Delhi. Morning traffic was light.

DOUBTS

The outcry over the attack caught the government off-guard. It took a week for Singh to make a statement, infuriating many protesters.

Issues such as rape, dowry-related deaths and female infanticide rarely enter mainstream political discourse in India.

Analysts say the death of the woman dubbed "Amanat", an Urdu word meaning "treasure", by some Indian media could change that, although it is too early to say whether the protesters calling for government action to better safeguard women can sustain their momentum through to national elections due in 2014.

Newspapers raised doubts about the commitment of both male politicians and the police to protecting women.

"Would the Indian political system and class have been so indifferent to the problem of sexual violence if half or even one-third of all legislators were women?" the Hindu newspaper asked.

The Indian Express acknowledged the police force was understaffed and poorly paid, but there was more to it than that.

"It is geared towards dominating citizens rather than working for them, not to mention being open to influential interests," the newspaper said. "It reflects the misogyny around us, rather than actively fighting for the rights of citizens who happen to be female."

Most sex crimes in India go unreported, many offenders go unpunished, and the wheels of justice turn slowly, according to social activists, who say that successive governments have done little to ensure the safety of women.

Commentators and sociologists say the rape has tapped into a deep well of frustration many Indians feel over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social issues.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures. Government data show the number of reported rape cases in India rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011.

For a link to the poll, click http://www.trust.org/trustlaw/news/special-coverage/g20women/

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin and Diksha Madhok; Writing by Louise Ireland; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Robert Birsel)

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Israel indicts former foreign minister Lieberman

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli far-right leader Avigdor Lieberman was charged on Sunday with fraud and breach of trust, allegations that prompted his resignation as foreign minister two weeks ago, justice officials said.

Lieberman, who has denied the accusations, remains head of the Yisrael Beitenu party that has formed a coalition with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party ahead of a January 22 parliamentary election.

Israeli justice officials said Lieberman was indicted on charges relating to the promotion of an Israeli diplomat who had illegally given him information about a police investigation against him.

Under Israeli law, conviction on the fraud and breach of trust charges could disqualify Lieberman from holding a cabinet post in the next government.

Lieberman, who lives in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, has stoked controversy by questioning the loyalties of Israel's 1.5 million Arab citizens.

His comments have drawn accusations of racism but have also given him a large electoral following beyond his Russian-speaking base.

Earlier this month, he angered the European Union by saying it had not sufficiently condemned calls by Hamas Islamists for Israel's destruction, likening this to Europe's failure to stop Nazi genocide against Jews during World War Two.

The European Union foreign policy chief called the comments offensive and reiterated the bloc's commitment to Israel's security.

Born in Moldova, Lieberman emigrated to Israel in 1978. He became administrative head of the Likud party in 1993 and ran the prime minister's office from 1996 to 1997 during Netanyahu's first term. He left and formed Yisrael Beitenu in 1999.

Lieberman is the latest in a string of Israeli politicians to face corruption charges in recent years. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned in 2008 after being indicted, though he has since been acquitted of most of the charges against him.

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Andrew Heavens)

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U.S. plane stuck in Iran for repairs after emergency landing

DUBAI (Reuters) - A small U.S. commercial plane has been stuck in Iran for nearly three weeks after making an emergency landing near the city of Ahvaz, the country's airports director said on Sunday.

The plane was forced to land because of technical problems, Mahmoud Rasoulinejad said, quoted by the Mehr news agency.

"After landing, the crew traveled on to countries around the Persian Gulf and the plane is currently being repaired," he said.

Rasoulinejad did not specify who owned the aircraft, where it was headed or the nationality of the crew members. It would soon be ready to return to the skies, he said.

Ahvaz lies near Iran's border with Iraq in the southwest of Iran, an important area for the country's oil industry.

Earlier this month Iran trumpeted the capture of a compact U.S. intelligence ScanEagle drone in its airspace, which U.S. officials have denied.

In December 2011 Iranian forces announced they had captured a U.S. RQ-170 reconnaissance drone in eastern Iran which had been reported lost by U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

(Reporting By Marcus George; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Alleged militants detained in Djibouti charged by U.S. court

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sign of evolving U.S. legal tactics in counter-terrorism operations, two Swedish citizens and a former British citizen detained in Africa in August have been charged in a U.S. court with supporting Somali-based Islamist militants.

The charges were filed in Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, even though court papers and a press release from the U.S. Attorney's office make no specific allegation that the three - all of whom are of Somali extraction - posed threats to Americans or U.S.-related targets.

The three suspects - two Swedish citizens and a former London resident whose British citizenship recently was revoked - were charged with supporting the militant group al-Shabaab, illegal use of high-powered firearms, and participating in what prosecutors called "an elite al-Shabaab suicide-bomber program."

Ephraim Savitt, a former federal prosecutor who represents one of the Swedish defendants, said he was unaware of any secret evidence that the men threatened U.S. interests, and he saw "no prosecutorial hook whatever to the United States."

Savitt said he was unaware of any previous case in which U.S. authorities had taken custody of foreign militants who had no obvious connection, and posed no known threat, to U.S. interests.

However, a U.S. law enforcement source said there had been cases in the past where suspected foreign militants arrested overseas who had not directly threatened the United States had been brought before U.S. courts on terrorism-related charges.

The latest suspects - Swedes Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mohamed Yusuf, and former British resident Madhi Hashi - were detained by local authorities in Africa in early August while on their way to Yemen, the statement from prosecutors said.

The suspects were subsequently indicted in October by a Brooklyn-based federal grand jury, and in mid-November the FBI "took custody" of them and brought them to Brooklyn, where a revised indictment was filed against them, prosecutors said.

No information about the case was made public until just before Christmas, however.

U.S. officials said they were unable to provide further details about where the suspects were originally arrested, who arrested them, what was the legal basis for their initial arrest, and what happened to them between early August and their first known public court appearance in late December.

ARRESTED IN DJIBOUTI

However, Savitt, who represents Yusuf, said the men were arrested in Djibouti on their way to Yemen.

He said that at one point the men had been "fighters" with al-Shabaab, a group the United States has linked to al Qaeda. But at the time of their arrest, Savitt said, the men were trying to get away from the group after an apparent falling out.

Savitt said he did not know why they were heading to Yemen.

Saghir Hussain, a British lawyer who represents the family of Hashi, told the BBC this month the case had the "hallmarks of rendition," a reference to a secret procedure adopted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency during the administration of former President George W. Bush.

Such renditions involved teams of agency operatives taking custody of suspected militants overseas and handing them over, without legal process, to third countries, where they were sometimes mistreated.

Neither Hussain nor Harry Batchelder, Hashi's American lawyer, responded to messages requesting comment. Susan Kellman, a U.S. lawyer for Ahmed, also could not be reached.

Savitt said Hashi and the other suspects were detained and held in Djibouti by local authorities, who sometimes treated them roughly, but U.S. officials who at one point were allowed to interrogate them were "civil."

U.S. government sources familiar with the case said it could not be considered a "rendition," as in such cases suspects were not brought into the U.S. criminal justice system.

President Barack Obama's administration has declared it has stopped counter-terrorism practices such as "enhanced interrogations" and the use of secret CIA prisons, but it has not completely renounced the use of "rendition."

Hashi's family told the BBC that earlier last summer they received a letter from Britain's internal security department, the Home Office, declaring that his British citizenship had been revoked as he was deemed a threat to the U.K. security.

Under British law, Hashi had a right to appeal the revocation of his citizenship to an immigration court. A spokesperson for the British Embassy in Washington said that, for legal reasons, the government could not comment on whether or not such an appeal had been filed.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

(This story was corrected to show that the suspects detained in August and clarifies that men of Somali extraction in the first paragraph)

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Analysis: U.N. confronts failure of diplomacy in Syria

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Attempts by the United Nations to end the bloody 21-month-old Syrian conflict through diplomacy have been a resounding failure and there is little reason to expect a quick change given the Russian-U.S. rift on Syria.

After a year of intensive diplomatic efforts by the world body, U.N.-Arab League peace mediator Lakhdar Brahimi of Algeria has made no more progress than his predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in getting the government and rebels to come to the negotiating table, or getting Russia and the United States to overcome their deep disagreements on Syria.

Brahimi heads to Moscow on Saturday to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the United Nations said, but expectations are low. Syria's opposition leader rejected an invitation from Russia to attend peace talks, which was a blow to Brahimi's efforts.

At the heart of the diplomatic roadblock is a seemingly unbreakable impasse on the U.N. Security Council, where Russia and the United States, both veto-wielding permanent members of the 15-nation group, are seeing their bilateral ties deteriorate.

There is no reason to expect anything different in early 2013. After three joint Russian-Chinese vetoes on Syria, the Security Council has all but given up on the issue.

"It's very depressing to be a party to failed diplomacy," a senior U.N. official told Reuters. "There's no end to the (Security Council) deadlock and as long as that deadlock remains, it's hard to make a difference beyond humanitarian aid, and that's not easy."

In addition to generally rocky relations between Washington and Moscow, Russia has strategic reasons for standing by Assad. He has been a staunch ally, a major purchaser of Russian arms and host to Russia's only warm-water naval port. But even Russia realizes Assad will likely be ousted sooner or later.

NO CEASEFIRE

Annan, the first U.N.-Arab League peace negotiator to try to end the escalating civil war, focused on getting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition to agree to a ceasefire.

With neither side willing to lay down its weapons, a frustrated Annan announced his resignation in August, saying the divided Security Council had undermined his efforts. He urged Russia, China and Iran to do more to push for an end to the bloodshed.

Brahimi is concentrating on healing the rift between Russia and the United States as the conflict in Syria becomes increasingly gruesome and sectarian, U.N. officials and diplomats say.

Disagreements between the United States and Russia or China on the 15-nation Security Council are nothing new. They have had sharp differences on crises in Georgia, North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and elsewhere that have prevented the council from taking any meaningful action.

But the deadlock on Syria is especially frustrating for U.N. officials and diplomats, who complain the United Nations has been confined to the sidelines as the corpses pile higher.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has repeatedly urged countries to unite in support of Brahimi's efforts but that has not happened.

"We do not see any prospect of any end of violence or any prospect of political dialogue to start," Ban told reporters last week.

Brahimi is convinced that ending the U.S.-Russian rift is the key to unraveling the Gordian knot that has prevented a negotiated end to a war in which 44,000 people have died.

The crux of their disagreement is whether Assad should go now, as the rebels, Washington and the Europeans want, or later, as Moscow would prefer, after a period with a transitional leadership that could include members of Assad's government.

Russia has repeatedly said it is not wedded to Assad, although it has refused to abandon him.

"For (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, it's all about not compromising with America at the moment," a senior Western diplomat said.

WASHINGTON-MOSCOW TIES

The latest example of worsening U.S.-Russian ties is Moscow's new ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children, a move that came in retaliation against U.S. human rights legislation aimed at Russia.

Diplomats and analysts say it is not Brahimi's fault that he has failed. The veteran Algerian diplomat played down hopes that he could succeed from the outset.

Richard Gowan of New York University said Brahimi's modest approach has restored some of the U.N. credibility that was lost while Annan was the Syria mediator.

"But (Brahimi's) current peace plan is at least half a year out of date," Gowan said. "The rebels simply will not buy it."

Brahimi is pushing for a transitional government and has suggested he wants to build on an international agreement signed in Geneva six months ago that envisioned a provisional body - which might include members of Assad's government as well as the opposition - leading the country to a new election.

His recycled peace plan has not made him popular with the rebels, who also have complained that the United States and Europeans have failed to provide them weapons, despite the West's clear desire to see Assad ousted. Diplomats say arms are reaching the rebels from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The mainly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels have seized the military initiative since June's Geneva meeting and the political opposition has ruled out any transitional government in which Assad, who is from Syria's Alawite minority, has a role.

Radwan Ziadeh of the opposition Syrian National Council dismissed Brahimi's proposal as "unrealistic and fanciful" and said a transitional government could not be built on the same "security and intelligence structure as the existing regime."

Some diplomats say Russia's influence on Syria is wildly exaggerated and that Assad is not going to compromise because he is fighting for his own and the Alawites' survival.

So where does that leave Russia?

"It's understood that Bashar al-Assad's regime will not last long," said Georgy Mirsky, a Middle East expert at the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.

"But this does not mean that Russia is ready to join the West, the Turks and the Arabs and demand that Assad go? That would be senseless. Syria is lost (to Russia) anyway," he said.

At least Russia "will be able to say that we do not abandon our friends," Mirsky said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman in Moscow and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Russian police free child hostage, kill seven militants in Dagestan

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian security forces killed seven militants and freed a 6-year-old girl taken hostage in the restive Dagestan region of Russia's volatile North Caucasus on Saturday, a national anti-terrorism committee official told Interfax news agency.

The incident took place in an apartment building in the provincial capital of Makhachkala, according to the Interfax report. The militants broke through a wall, entered an apartment and took the girl hostage, according to the report.

"However, as a result of coordinated and professional actions of the special forces, the child was set free and the remaining bandits were neutralized," an anti-terrorism committee representative was quoted as saying.

The Interfax report identified the leader of the militants involved in the incident as Gadzhimurat Dolgatov and said he was among the seven killed. The report said those killed had previously served sentences for crimes including murder, extortion, theft and robbery.

During the incident, the militants opened fire and threw a grenade at the special forces personnel while trying to flee, but no security forces were hurt, Interfax reported.

Rebels who say they are fighting for an Islamic state in the strip of North Caucasus provinces often target police and security forces as well as government officials and mainstream Muslim leaders in attacks.

Rights activists say the insurgency is also driven by poverty and anger at the heavy-handed tactics of the Russian security forces.

(Reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Indian gang rape victim dies; New Delhi braces for protests

NEW DELHI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A woman whose gang rape sparked protests and a national debate about violence against women in India died of her injuries on Saturday, prompting a security lockdown in New Delhi and an acknowledgement from India's prime minister that social change is needed.

Bracing for a new wave of protests, Indian authorities deployed thousands of policemen, closed 10 metro stations and banned vehicles from some main roads in the heart of New Delhi, where demonstrators have converged since the attack to demand improved women's rights. Hundreds of people staged peaceful protests at two locations on Saturday morning.

The 23-year-old medical student, severely beaten, raped and thrown out of a moving bus in New Delhi two weeks ago, had been flown to Singapore in a critical condition by the Indian government on Thursday for specialist treatment.

The intense media coverage of the attack and the use of social media to galvanize the protests, mostly by young middle-class students, has forced political leaders to confront some uncomfortable truths about the treatment of women in the world's largest democracy.

Most sex crimes in India go unreported, many offenders go unpunished, and the wheels of justice turn slowly, according to social activists who say that successive governments have done too little to ensure the safety of women.

"The need of the hour is a dispassionate debate and inquiry into the critical changes that are required in societal attitudes," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement.

"I hope that the entire political class and civil society will set aside narrow sectional interests and agenda to help us all reach the end that we all desire - making India a demonstrably better and safer place for women to live in."

T.C.A. Raghavan, the Indian high commissioner to Singapore, told reporters hours after the woman's death in a Singapore hospital that a chartered aircraft would fly her body back to India on Saturday, along with members of her family.

The body was taken to a Hindu casket firm in Singapore for embalming. Indian diplomats selected a gold and yellow coffin to transport her home, staff at the firm told reporters.

"We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4:45 a.m. on Dec 29, 2012 (2045 GMT Friday). Her family and officials from the High Commission (embassy) of India were by her side," Mount Elizabeth Hospital Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Loh said earlier in a statement.

Delhi's chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, said the woman's death was a "shameful moment for me not just as a chief minister but also as a citizen of this country".

The woman, who has not been identified, and a male friend were returning home from the cinema by bus on the evening of December 16 when, media reports say, six men on the bus beat them with metal rods and repeatedly raped the woman. Media said a rod was used in the rape, causing internal injuries. Both were thrown from the bus. The male friend survived.

The attack has put gender issues center stage in Indian politics arguably for the first time. Issues such as rape, dowry-related deaths and female infanticide have rarely entered mainstream political discourse.

Analysts say the death of the woman dubbed "Amanat", an Urdu word meaning "treasure," by some media could change that, although it is too early to say whether the protesters calling for government action to better safeguard women can sustain their momentum through to national elections due in 2014.

WORST PLACE

The public outcry over the attack caught the government off-guard. It took a week for Singh to make a public statement on the attack, infuriating many protesters who saw it as a sign of a government insensitive to the plight of women.

The prime minister, a stiff 80-year-old technocrat who speaks in a low monotone, has struggled to channel the popular outrage in his public statements and convince critics that his eight-year-old government will now take concrete steps to improve the safety of women.

"The Congress mangers were ham-handed in their handling of the situation that arose after the brutal assault on the girl. The crowd management was poor," a lawmaker from Singh's ruling Congress party said on condition of anonymity.

Protesters fought pitched battles with police around the capital last weekend. Police used batons, water cannon and teargas to quell the protests.

Commentators and sociologists say the rape has tapped into a deep well of frustration many Indians feel over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social issues.

A global poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in June found that India was the worst place to be a woman because of high rates of infanticide, child marriage and slavery.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures. Government data show the number of reported rape cases in the country rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011.

Indian media had accused the government of sending the woman to Singapore to minimize any backlash in the event of her death but Raghavan said it had been a medical decision intended to ensure she got the best treatment.

The suspects in the rape - five men, including two brothers, aged between 20 and 40, and a 15-year-old - were arrested within hours of the attack and are in custody. The suspects, all from a slum in south Delhi, will be formally charged with murder, New Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police Chhaya Sharma told Reuters.

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told Times Now television the government was committed to ensuring "the severest possible punishment to all the accused at the earliest".

"It will not go in vain. We will give maximum punishment to the culprits. Not only to this, but in future also. This one incident has given a greater lesson" Shinde said.

He said earlier the government was considering hanging for rape in rare cases. Murder already carries the death penalty.

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin and Diksha Madhok in New Delhi; Kevin Lim, Saeed Azhar, Edgar Su and Sanjeev Miglani in Singapore; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Robert Birsel and Ross Colvin)

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Russia's Putin signals he will sign U.S. adoption ban

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin signaled on Thursday he would sign into law a bill barring Americans from adopting Russian children and sought to forestall criticism of the move by promising measures to better care for his country's orphans.

In televised comments, Putin tried to appeal to people's patriotism by suggesting that strong and responsible countries should take care of their own and lent his support to a bill that has further strained U.S.-Russia relations.

"There are probably many places in the world where living standards are higher than ours. So what, are we going to send all our children there? Maybe we should move there ourselves?" he said, with sarcasm.

Parliament gave its final approval on Wednesday to the bill, which would also introduce other measures in retaliation for new U.S. legislation which is designed to punish Russians accused of human rights violations.

For it to become law Putin needs to sign it.

"So far I see no reason not to sign it, although I have to review the final text and weigh everything," Putin said at a meeting of federal and regional officials that was shown live on the state's 24-hour news channel.

"I intend to sign not only the law ... but also a presidential decree that will modify the support mechanisms for orphaned children ... especially those who are in a difficult situation, by that I mean in poor health," Putin said.

Critics of the bill say the Russian authorities are playing political games with the lives of children, while the U.S. State Department repeated its "deep concern" over the measure.

"Since 1992 American families have welcomed more than 60,000 Russian children into their homes, and it is misguided to link the fate of children to unrelated political considerations," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement.

Ventrell added that the United States was troubled by provisions in the bill that would restrict the ability of Russian civil society organizations to work with U.S. partners.

Children in Russia's crowded and troubled orphanage system - particularly those with serious illnesses or disabilities - will have less of a chance of finding homes, and of even surviving, if it becomes law, child rights advocates say.

They point to people like Jessica Long, who was given up shortly after birth by her parents in Siberia but was raised by adoptive parents in the United States and became a Paralympic swimming champion.

However, the Russian authorities point to the deaths of 19 Russian-born children adopted by American parents in the past decade, and lawmakers named the bill after a boy who died of heat stroke in Virginia after his adoptive father left him locked in a car for hours.

Putin reiterated Russian complaints that U.S. courts have been too lenient on parents in such cases, saying Russia has inadequate access to Russian-born children in the United States despite a bilateral agreement that entered into force on November 1.

NATIONAL IDENTITY

But Putin, who began a new six-year term in May and has searched for ways to unite the country during 13 years in power, suggested there were deeper motives for such a ban.

"For centuries, neither spiritual nor state leaders sent anyone abroad," he said, indicating he was not speaking specifically about Russia but about many societies.

"They always fight for their national identities - they gather themselves together in a fist, they fight for their language, culture," he said.

The bid to ban American adoptions plays on sensitivity in Russia about adoptions by foreigners, which skyrocketed as the social safety net unraveled with the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Families from the United States adopt more Russian children than those of any other country.

Putin had earlier described the Russian bill as an emotional but appropriate response to the Magnitsky Act, legislation signed by President Barack Obama this month as part of a law granting Russia "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) status.

The U.S. law imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russians accused of human rights violations, including those linked to the death in a Moscow jail of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-graft lawyer, in 2009.

The Russian bill would impose similar measures against Americans accused of violating the rights of Russian abroad and outlaw some U.S.-funded non-governmental groups.

(Reporting By Alexei Anishchuk; additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Doina Chiacu)

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CAR appeals for French help against rebels, Paris balks

BANGUI (Reuters) - The president of the Central African Republic appealed on Thursday for France and the United States to help push back rebels threatening his government and the capital, but Paris said its troops were only ready to protect French nationals.

The exchanges came as regional African leaders tried to broker a ceasefire deal and as rebels said they had temporarily halted their advance on Bangui, the capital, to allow talks to take place.

Insurgents on motorbikes and in pickup trucks have driven to within 75 km (47 miles) of Bangui after weeks of fighting, threatening to end President Francois Bozize's nearly 10-year-stint in charge of the turbulent, resource-rich country.

French nuclear energy group Areva mines the Bakouma uranium deposit in the CAR's south - France's biggest commercial interest in its former colony.

The rebel advance has highlighted the instability of a country that has remained poor since independence from Paris in 1960 despite rich deposits of uranium, gold and diamonds. Average income is barely over $2 a day.

Bozize on Thursday appealed for French and U.S. military support to stop the SELEKA rebel coalition, which has promised to overthrow him unless he implements a previous peace deal in full.

He told a crowd of anti-rebel protesters in the riverside capital that he had asked Paris and Washington to help move the rebels away from the capital to clear the way for peace talks which regional leaders say could be held soon in Libreville, Gabon.

"We are asking our cousins the French and the United States, which are major powers, to help us push back the rebels to their initial positions in a way that will permit talks in Libreville to resolve this crisis," Bozize said.

France has 250 soldiers in its landlocked former colony as part of a peacekeeping mission and Paris in the past has ousted or propped up governments - including by using air strikes to defend Bozize against rebels in 2006.

But French President Francois Hollande poured cold water on the latest request for help.

"If we have a presence, it's not to protect a regime, it's to protect our nationals and our interests and in no way to intervene in the internal business of a country, in this case the Central African Republic," Hollande said on the sidelines of a visit to a wholesale food market outside Paris.

"Those days are over," he said.

Some 1,200 French nationals live in the CAR, mostly in the capital, according to the French Foreign Ministry, where they typically work for mining firms or aid groups.

CEASEFIRE TALKS

The U.N. Security Council issued a statement saying its members "condemn the continued attacks on several towns perpetrated by the 'SELEKA' coalition of armed groups which gravely undermine the Libreville Comprehensive Peace Agreement and threaten the civilian population."

U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. embassy had temporarily suspended operations and the U.S. ambassador and other embassy personnel had left the country.

Officials from around central Africa are due to meet in Bangui later on Thursday to open initial talks with the government and rebels.

A rebel spokesman said fighters had temporarily halted their advance to allow dialogue.

"We will not enter Bangui," Colonel Djouma Narkoyo, the rebel spokesman, told Reuters by telephone.

Previous rebel promises to stop advancing have been broken, and a diplomatic source said rebels had taken up positions around Bangui on Thursday, effectively surrounding it.

The atmosphere remained tense in the city the day after anti-rebel protests broke out, and residents were stocking up on food and water.

Government soldiers deployed at strategic sites and French troops reinforced security at the French embassy after protesters threw rocks at the building on Wednesday.

In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry said protecting foreigners and embassies was the responsibility of the CAR authorities.

"This message will once again be stressed to the CAR's charge d'affaires in Paris, who has been summoned this afternoon," a ministry spokesman said.

He also said France condemned the rebels for pursuing hostilities and urged all sides to commit to talks.

Bozize came to power in a 2003 rebellion that overthrew President Ange-Felix Patasse.

However, France is increasingly reluctant to directly intervene in conflicts in its former colonies. Since coming to power in May, Hollande has promised to end its shadowy relations with former colonies and put ties on a healthier footing.

A military source and an aid worker said the rebels had got as far as Damara, 75 km (47 miles) from Bangui, by late afternoon on Wednesday, having skirted Sibut, where some 150 Chadian soldiers had earlier been deployed to try and block a push south by a rebel coalition.

With a government that holds little sway outside the capital, some parts of the country have long endured the consequences of conflicts in troubled neighbors Chad, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo spilling over.

The Central African Republic is one of a number of nations in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local forces try to track down the Lords Resistance Army, a rebel group responsible for killing thousands of civilians across four African nations.

(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas and Louis Charbonneau; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Paul Simao)

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New Japan PM to send envoys to South Korea amid territory dispute

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will send envoys to meet South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye next month, a spokeswoman for Park said, a sign of Japan reaching out to its neighbor despite feuds over territory and wartime history.

Japan's relations with South Korea frayed badly in August after outgoing President Lee Myung-bak visited a disputed set of islands known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in Korea. Koreans also harbor bitter resentment of Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945.

The hawkish Abe, who wants to recast Japan's wartime history in less apologetic tones, led his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to a landslide victory in the December 16 lower house election, putting the conservative party back in power after a three-year hiatus.

The spokeswoman did not say who the envoys will be, but Abe told reporters last week he planned to send former finance minister Fukushiro Nukaga "to improve and develop Japan-South Korea relations". Abe visits on January 4.

Public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday that LDP senior lawmaker Takeo Kawamura would join Nukaga in the delegation.

Despite their close economic ties, Tokyo's relations with its East Asian neighbors Seoul and Beijing have long been overshadowed by Japan's militaristic past.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Thursday fell short of confirming Japan will uphold a landmark 1993 government statement acknowledging that Asian women were forced into sex slaves at wartime Japanese military brothels.

"History scholars and other experts are conducting study (on the issue). It is desirable such research be continued," Suga told reporters.

But Suga has said the new government will stand by a historic 1995 statement by then-prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, apologizing for suffering caused by Japan's wartime aggression.

(Reporting by Linda Sieg and Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo and Jack Kim in Seoul; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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China tightens loophole on hiring temporary workers

BEIJING (Reuters) - China amended its labor law on Friday to ensure that workers hired through contracting agents are offered the same conditions as full employees, a move meant to tighten a loophole used by many employers to maintain flexible staffing.

Contracting agencies have taken off since China implemented the Labor Contract Law in 2008, which stipulates employers must pay workers' health insurance and social security benefits and makes firing very difficult.

"Hiring via labor contracting agents should be arranged only for temporary, supplementary and backup jobs," the amendment reads, according to the Xinhua news agency. It takes effect on July 1, 2013.

Contracted laborers now make up about a third of the workforce at many Chinese and multinational factories, and in some cases account for well over half.

Some foreign representative offices, all news bureaus and most embassies are required to hire Chinese staff through employment agencies, rather than directly.

Although in theory contracted workers are paid the same, with benefits supplied by the agencies who are legally their direct employers, in practice many contracted workers, especially in manufacturing industries and state-owned enterprises, do not enjoy benefits and are paid less.

Employment agencies have been set up by local governments and even by companies themselves to keep an arms-length relationship with workers. Workers who are underpaid, fired or suffer injury often find it very difficult to pursue compensation through agencies.

Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. said in November that it would require its 249 supplier factories in China to cap the number of temporary or contracted workers at 30 percent of regular full-time employees.

It announced the corrective measure after Chinese labor activists reported violations of overtime rules and working conditions as well as under-age workers at Samsung suppliers. Samsung says its own audit did not find workers under China's legal working age of 16.

(Reporting By Lucy Hornby; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Mental illness, poverty haunted Afghan policewoman who killed American

KABUL (Reuters) - The Afghan policewoman suspected of killing a U.S. contractor at police headquarters in Kabul suffered from mental illness and was driven to suicidal despair by poverty, her children told Reuters on Wednesday.

The woman was identified by authorities as Narges Rezaeimomenabad, a 40-year-old grandmother and mother of three who moved here from Iran 10 years ago and married an Afghan man.

On Monday morning, she loaded a pistol in a bathroom at the police compound, hid it in her long scarf and shot an American police trainer, apparently becoming the first Afghan woman to carry out such an attack.

Narges also tried to shoot police officials after killing the American. Luckily for them, her pistol jammed. Her husband is also under investigation.

Her son Sayed, 16, and daughter Fatima, 13, described how they tried to call their parents 100 times after news broke of the shooting, then waited in vain for them to come home.

They recalled Narges's severe mood swings, and how at times she beat them and even pulled out a knife. But the children said she was consistent in bemoaning poverty.

"She was usually complaining about poverty. She was complaining to my father about our conditions. She was saying that my father was poor," Sayid said in an interview in their damp, cold two-room cement house.

On the floor beside him were his mother's prescriptions and a thick plastic bag filled with pills she tried to swallow to end the misery about a month ago. On another occasion, she cut her wrist with a razor, Sayed said.

"My father was usually calm and sometimes would say that she was guilty too because it wasn't a forced marriage. They fell in love and got married."

There was no sign in their neighborhood of the billions of dollars of Western aid that have poured into Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, or of government investment.

RAW SEWAGE, STAGNANT WATER, DIRT ROADS

The lane outside their home stank of raw sewage.

Dirty, stagnant water filled holes in dirt roads nearby, where children in tattered clothes played and butchers stood by cow's hooves in shops choked by dust.

Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest nations, with a third of its 30 million residents living under the poverty line.

The sole distractions from the daily grind appeared to be a deck of playing cards and a compact disc with songs from Iranian pop singers, scattered on the floor of a room where Narges would lock herself in and weep, or sit in silence.

At times, Narges would try to focus on building her children's confidence, telling them to be guided by the Muslim holy book, the Koran, to tackle life's problems.

Sayed and Fatima said she never spoke badly of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan or of President Hamid Karzai's government.

Neighbor Mohammad Ismail Kohistani was dumbfounded to hear on the radio that Afghan officials were combing Narges' phone records to try to determine whether al Qaeda or the Taliban could have brainwashed her into carrying out a mission.

But he was acutely aware of her mental problems and often heard her scream at her husband, whose low-level job in the crime investigation unit of the police brought home little cash.

Kohistani, who operates a small sewing shop with battered machines, never imagined his neighbor could be accused of a high-profile attack that raised new questions about the direction of an unpopular war.

"I became very depressed and sad," said Kohistani, sitting on the floor few feet from a tiny wood-burning stove in Narges's home, alongside family photographs and a police training manual.

Fatima would often seek refuge in Kohistani's house when her mother's behavior became unbearable. "She did not hate us, but usually she was angry and would not talk to us," said Fatima, her eyes moist with tears.

Nevertheless, she missed her mother. The children were staying with a cousin.

"I ask the government to free my mother, otherwise our future will be destroyed," said Fatima.

Officials described it as another "insider shooting", in which Afghan forces turn on Westerners they are meant to be working with to stabilize the country. There have been over 52 such attacks so far this year.

The shooting at the police headquarters may have alarmed Afghanistan's Western allies. But some Afghans have grown numb to the violence.

Kohistani's 70-year-old father Omara Khan, who sports a white beard, sat twirling prayer beads beneath a photograph of Narges in a black veil beside one of her husband.

Asked what he thought of the attack, he laughed.

"This is common in Afghanistan," said Khan, who lived through decades of upheaval, including the 10-year Soviet occupation and a civil war that destroyed half of Kabul and killed some 50,000 civilians.

"People are killed every day."

(Editing by Ron Popeski)

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Syria to discuss Brahimi peace proposals with Russia

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent a senior diplomat to Moscow on Wednesday to discuss proposals to end the conflict convulsing his country made by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, Syrian and Lebanese sources said.

Brahimi, who saw Assad on Monday and is planning to hold a series of meetings with Syrian officials and dissidents in Damascus this week, is trying to broker a peaceful transfer of power, but has disclosed little about how this might be done.

More than 44,000 Syrians have been killed in a revolt against four decades of Assad family rule, a conflict that began with peaceful protests but which has descended into civil war.

Past peace efforts have floundered, with world powers divided over what has become an increasingly sectarian struggle between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and Assad's security forces, drawn primarily from his Shi'ite-rooted Alawite minority.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Makdad flew to Moscow to discuss the details of the talks with Brahimi, said a Syrian security source, who would not say if a deal was in the works.

However, a Lebanese official close to Damascus said Makdad had been sent to seek Russian advice on a possible agreement.

He said Syrian officials were upbeat after talks with Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy, who met Foreign Minister Walid Moualem on Tuesday a day after his session with Assad, but who has not outlined his ideas in public.

"There is a new mood now and something good is happening," the official said, asking not to be named. He gave no details.

Russia, which has given Assad diplomatic and military aid to help him weather the 21-month-old uprising, has said it is not protecting him, but has fiercely criticized any foreign backing for rebels and, with China, has blocked U.N. Security Council action on Syria.

"ASSAD CANNOT STAY"

A Russian Foreign Ministry source said Makdad and an aide would meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Mikhail Bogdanov, the Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, on Thursday, but did not disclose the nature of the talks.

On Saturday, Lavrov said Syria's civil war had reached a stalemate, saying international efforts to get Assad to quit would fail. Bogdanov had earlier acknowledged that Syrian rebels were gaining ground and might win.

Given the scale of the bloodshed and destruction, Assad's opponents insist the Syrian president must go.

Moaz Alkhatib, head of the internationally-recognized Syrian National Coalition opposition, has criticized any notion of a transitional government in which Assad would stay on as a figurehead president stripped of real powers.

Comments on Alkhatib's Facebook page on Monday suggested that the opposition believed this was one of Brahimi's ideas.

"The government and its president cannot stay in power, with or without their powers," Alkhatib wrote, saying his Coalition had told Brahimi it rejected any such solution.

While Brahimi was working to bridge the vast gaps between Assad and his foes, fighting raged across the country and a senior Syrian military officer defected to the rebels.

Syrian army shelling killed about 20 people, at least eight of them children, in the northern province of Raqqa, a video posted by opposition campaigners showed.

The video, published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, showed rows of blood-stained bodies laid out on blankets. The sound of crying relatives could be heard in the background.

The shelling hit the province's al-Qahtania village, but it was unclear when the attack had occurred.

STRATEGIC BASE

Rebels relaunched their assault on the Wadi Deif military base in the northwestern province of Idlib, in a battle for a major army compound and fuel storage and distribution point.

Activist Ahmed Kaddour said rebels were firing mortars and had attacked the base with a vehicle rigged with explosives.

The British-based Observatory, which uses a network of contacts in Syria to monitor the conflict, said a rebel commander was among several people killed in Wednesday's fighting, which it said was among the heaviest for months.

The military used artillery and air strikes to try to hold back rebels assaulting Wadi Deif and the town of Morek in Hama province further south. In one air raid, several rockets fell near a field hospital in the town of Saraqeb, in Idlib province, wounding several people, the Observatory said.

As violence has intensified in recent weeks, daily death tolls have climbed. The Observatory reported at least 190 had been killed across the country on Tuesday alone.

The head of Syria's military police changed sides and declared allegiance to the anti-Assad revolt.

"I am General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal, head of the military police. I have defected because of the deviation of the army from its primary duty of protecting the country and its transformation into gangs of killing and destruction," the officer said in a video published on YouTube.

A Syrian security source confirmed the defection, but said Shalal was near retirement and had only defected to "play hero".

Syrian Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar left Lebanon for Damascus after being treated in Beirut for wounds sustained in a rebel bomb attack this month.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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Pakistan Taliban spokesman outlines conditions for ceasefire

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The Pakistani Taliban have outlined conditions for a ceasefire, including the adoption of Islamic law, a spokesman said Friday.

The Taliban, in a letter printed by the Pakistan daily The News, also demanded that Pakistan stop its involvement in the war pitting Afghan insurgents against the Kabul government and refocus on a war of "revenge" against India. The militants accused Pakistan's army of acting as "mercenaries" for America.

The conditions, confirmed by spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan in a phone call to Reuters, also said Pakistan should rewrite its laws and constitution according to Islamic law.

(Reporting By Katharine Houreld; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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China seizes TVs, satellite equipment in Tibetan area

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have confiscated televisions from 300 monasteries in a heavily Tibetan part of the west of the country and dismantled satellite equipment that broadcast "anti-China" programs, prompted by Tibetan self-immolations in the region.

Some 94 Tibetans, including 81 this year, have set themselves on fire in protest against Chinese rule. Five self-immolations occurred in Tibetan-dominated Huangnan prefecture in Qinghai province, the state-run Qinghai news agency said on Thursday.

The government in Huangnan said its approach in tackling self-immolations comprised of "guiding public opinion on the Dalai issue", increasing patrols and "blocking outside harmful information", according to the news agency, which is managed by the Qinghai government.

"At this critical moment for maintaining social stability in Huangnan prefecture ... (we must) strengthen measures and fully fight the special battle against self-immolations," the article said.

"We do not know anything about it," an official from the Huangnan prefecture government told Reuters by telephone, when asked to confirm the report, before hanging up.

Beijing considers Nobel peace laureate the Dalai Lama, who fled China in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule, a separatist. The Dalai Lama says he is merely seeking greater autonomy for his Himalayan homeland.

The article said the prefecture's agricultural and pastoral areas had relied on certain satellite equipment "to watch and listen to overseas, anti-China programs".

The local government would invest 8.64 million yuan ($1.39 million) to install 50 transmitters that would broadcast 70 percent of the prefecture's television channels, the report said.

China has repeatedly denounced the Dalai Lama and exiled Tibetan groups for fomenting the self-immolations.

The United States and several other countries have called on China to end repressive policies and to negotiate with the Dalai Lama.

Beijing 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.

($1 = 6.2353 yuan)

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee, Additional reporting by Huang Yan; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Three Afghans dead in new blast at U.S. base in Afghan east

KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed three people in an attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan on Wednesday, the same base that is believed to be used by the CIA and which a suicide bomber attacked three years ago killing seven CIA employees.

The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the eastern town of Khost, saying they had sent a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives to the base.

"The target was those who serve Americans at that base," said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Afghanistan's NATO-led force said the bomber did not get into the base nor breach its perimeter. Police said the three dead were Afghans who were outside the base, which is beside a military airport.

The al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, widely regarded as the most dangerous U.S. foe in Afghanistan, is active in Khost province, which is on the Pakistani border.

After more than a decade of war, Taliban insurgents are still able to strike strategic military targets, and launch high-profile attacks in the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere.

Three years ago, an al Qaeda-linked Jordanian double-agent killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer in a suicide bombing at the same base in Khost, known as Forward Operating Base Chapman.

It was the second deadliest attack in CIA history.

Afghan police official General Abdul Qasim Baqizoy, the Khost police chief, said no CIA agents were hurt on Wednesday.

Afghan authorities are scrambling to improve security across the country before the U.S. combat mission ends in 2014.

Besides pressure from the Taliban, U.S.-led NATO forces also face a rising number of so-called insider attacks, in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on Western troops they are supposed to be working with.

On Monday, an Afghan policewoman killed a U.S. police adviser at the Kabul police headquarters, raising troubling questions about the direction of the war.

It appeared to be the first time that a woman member of Afghanistan's security forces carried out such an attack.

On Tuesday, Afghan officials said the woman has an Iranian passport and moved to Afghanistan 10 years ago. There was no suggestion that Iran was involved in the attack on the American.

Officials suspect she may have been recruited by al Qaeda or the Taliban, and had intended to also kill Afghan police officials.

(Reporting by Elyas Wahdat; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Spring Wish denied as suicide bomber brings down Afghan juice empire

KABUL (Reuters) - When a Taliban suicide bomber killed two people on the edge of the Afghan capital this month, there was another casualty - a global fruit juice business optimistically called "Spring Wish" which provided work for thousands of farmers across the country.

Mustafa Sadiq's empire had been expanding healthily, bringing in badly needed foreign capital, before the attack inflicted the kind of financial loss cash-strapped Afghanistan can ill afford.

The pomegranate juice business was nearly wiped out in the split second it took the militant to detonate explosives in a truck parked near the factory on December 17.

Pieces of shredded metal were scattered everywhere. Chairs were hurled across the office where Sadiq had spent so much time figuring out how to beat the odds against decades of war, instability and hopelessness.

Sadiq was in Dubai drumming up new export deals when an assistant called with the bad news. The call that Sadiq said he did not get is also troubling him.

"So far no officials, for the sake of sympathy, have called us," Sadiq, 40, told Reuters, standing beside a year's supply of juice in containers that were ruined in the attack - nearly $10 million in losses overall.

"In this situation they should have called me and asked what kind of help they could provide. The agriculture, finance, commerce ministries. Nobody so far has visited or called."

The impact of the war, and expectations for the future, are often seen only through the eyes of Western or Afghan soldiers, or officials who point to the progress that has been made.

Sadiq offers another perspective. Some workers told him the bomber triggered the loudest blast they had heard in 30 years.

A Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was followed by a decade of resistance by mujahideen fighters who drove them out. Then warlords carved out fiefdoms and destroyed half of the capital in the civil war that followed.

DIRTY POLITICS

The Taliban took over, were toppled in 2001 and are now raising fears they may return when U.S.-led NATO troops hand over security to Afghan forces in 2014.

But Sadiq does not see the Taliban as the biggest threat to Afghanistan's future. Instead, he says, officials have turned politics into a commercial enterprise driven by corruption.

"Government employees think it's time to fill their pockets and grab whatever they can. That will pave the way for civil war," said Sadiq, as workers feverishly loaded boxes of the little fruit juice left onto a truck, and others worked to rebuild a brick wall.

"You have to struggle, not run away. It is kind of like running away now. They have walls around themselves sitting there and they do not have contact with ordinary Afghans."

His disillusionment is shared by the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries.

"There is no guarantee for investment in Afghanistan. People are afraid of the government, there is no rule of law. Government officials can do anything they want," the chamber's first vice-chairman, Jan Alokzai, told Reuters.

"President (Hamid) Karzai's words are only on paper and don't have any value."

Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government says it is committed to building up the economy, attracting foreign investment and helping Afghans secure a brighter future. Karzai says it is contracts with foreigners that spread graft.

WISHFUL THINKING?

The government has highlighted 2014 as a year to invest in Afghanistan, which relies heavily on foreign aid, and to take advantage of its cheap labor and land leases.

In each of the 10 years following 2014, the government hopes revenues from oil, natural gas, iron, copper and other mining ventures will generate $4 billion in revenue.

Sadiq spent time in Europe, waiting for an opportunity to return and invest in his homeland. He eventually opened a factory in an industrial park along Kabul's dusty Jalalabad Road in 2008, from where he broke into overseas markets.

Spring Wish, which employed about 1,000 people, was selling produce to the health conscious in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, bringing money into Afghanistan, while anxious Afghans carted $4.5 billion in cash out of the country last year to safety.

But when asked about the maps on a wall identifying parts of Afghanistan which offer opportunities for farmers and businesses like his, Sadiq could only put his head in his hands and cry.

The dark red seeds from Sadiq's fruits were prized in Europe for their antioxidant qualities, and in Japan where many believe they can help fight cancers. He seems most proud of the fact that he helped 40,000 farmers across Afghanistan earn a living.

As Sadiq tries to persuade his staff to keep dreaming big and to rebuild, one question may haunt him for some time. The suicide bomber parked his truck in a lane between his company and a foreign firm.

The Taliban said it attacked an American company next door, but he still wonders whether his factory, which relied on Italian machinery and benefited from U.S. aid programs, was the target. And he acknowledges he is desperate for money from Western donors.

"Around 120 people were working here and this factory was totally destroyed in the suicide attack," said Mohammed Jaw, 28, a general operator for the company. "A number of our workers will lose their jobs and now everyone is concerned about what happens next."

Despite the loss, Sadiq's entrepreneurial and marketing spirit seems intact.

"Have you tried the juice with mulberry flavor?" he asked proudly. "It's really good."

Then a worker brought the moment back to reality. He lifted his cellphone to show a photograph of the suicide bomber's severed head.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Japan's Abe taps allies for cabinet, eyes deflation

TOKYO (Reuters) - New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled a cabinet stacked with close allies on Wednesday, kicking off a second administration committed to battling deflation and coping with the challenge of a rising China.

Abe, 58, has promised aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan and big fiscal spending by the debt-laden government to slay deflation and weaken the yen to make Japanese exports more competitive.

The grandson of a former prime minister, Abe has staged a stunning comeback five years after abruptly resigning as premier in the wake of a one-year term troubled partly by scandals in his cabinet and public outrage over lost pension records.

"I want to learn from the experience of my previous administration, including the setbacks, and aim for a stable government," Abe told reporters before parliament's lower house voted him in as Japan's seventh prime minister in six years.

The vote was a formality after Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) surged back to power in this month's election, three years after a crushing defeat at the hands of the novice Democratic Party of Japan. Abe was to be confirmed by Emperor Akihito later in the day, another formality.

CLOSE ALLIES, PARTY RIVALS

Abe appointed a cabinet of close allies leavened by some LDP rivals to fend off the criticism of cronyism that dogged his first administration.

Former prime minister Taro Aso, 72, was named finance minister and also received the financial services portfolio.

Ex-trade and industry minister Akira Amari becomes minister for economic revival while policy veteran Toshimitsu Motegi takes over as trade minister. Motegi is also be tasked with formulating energy policy in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year.

Loyal Abe backer Yoshihide Suga was appointed chief cabinet secretary, a key post combining the job of top government spokesman with responsibility for coordinating among ministries.

Others who share Abe's agenda to revise the pacifist constitution and rewrite Japan's wartime history with a less apologetic tone were also given posts, including conservative lawmaker Hakubun Shimomura as education minister.

"These are really LDP right-wingers and close friends of Abe," said Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano. "It really doesn't look very fresh at all."

Fiscal hawk Sadakazu Tanigaki, whom Abe replaced as LDP leader in September, becomes justice minister while two rivals who ran unsuccessfully in that party race - Yoshimasa Hayashi and Nobuteru Ishihara - got the agriculture and environment/nuclear crisis portfolios respectively.

CENTRAL BANK THREATENED

The yen has weakened about 9.8 percent against the dollar since Abe was elected LDP leader in September. On Wednesday, it hit a 20-month low of 85.38 yen against the greenback on expectations of aggressive monetary policy easing.

Abe has threatened to revise a law guaranteeing the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) independence if it refuses to set a 2 percent inflation target.

BOJ minutes released on Wednesday showed the central bank was already pondering policy options in November, concerned about looming risks to the economy. The BOJ stood pat at its November rate review meeting but eased this month in response to intensifying pressure from Abe.

Abe also promised during the election campaign to take a tough stance in territorial rows with China and South Korea over separate chains of tiny islands, while placing priority on strengthening Japan's alliance with the United States.

Abe appointed two low-profile officials to the foreign and defense portfolios.

Itsunori Onodera, 52, who was senior vice foreign minister in Abe's first cabinet, becomes defense minister while Fumio Kishida, 55, a former state minister for issues related to Okinawa island - host to the bulk of U.S. forces in Japan - was appointed to the top diplomatic post.

Abe, who hails from a wealthy political family, made his first overseas visit to China to repair chilly ties when he took office in 2006, but has said his first trip this time will be to the United States.

He may, however, put contentious issues that could upset key trade partner China and fellow-U.S. ally South Korea on the backburner to concentrate on boosting the economy, now in its fourth recession since 2000, ahead of an election for parliament's upper house in July.

The LDP and its small ally, the New Komeito party, won a two-thirds majority in the 480-seat lower house in the December 16 election. That allows the lower house to enact bills rejected by the upper house, where the LDP-led block lacks a majority.

But the process is cumbersome, so the LDP is keen to win a majority in the upper house to end the parliamentary deadlock that has plagued successive governments since 2007.

"The LDP is still under the critical eyes of the public. We need to earn their trust by getting things done one by one," Abe told party lawmakers ahead of the lower house vote.

"First on the agenda is economic recovery, beating deflation and correcting a firm yen and getting the economy back on the growth path. If we don't pursue this target, an upper house election next year will be a tough one for us."

In a sign of the "twisted parliament" Abe confronts, he was voted in with a whopping 328 votes in the powerful 480-seat lower house, but failed to win a first round vote in the upper chamber. He defeated new opposition Democratic Party chief Banri Kaieda in a run-off.

($1 = 84.7950 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Leika Kihara, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Tetsushi Kajimoto and Chris Meyers; Editing by Dean Yates)

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Iran rejects interference accusation by Gulf Arabs

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran rejected accusations from Gulf Arab states that it was meddling in their affairs, saying those countries were "running away from reality", an Iranian news agency reported on Wednesday.

Six U.S.-allied states demanded Iran end what they called interference in the region, in a statement on Tuesday at the end of a two-day summit of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), reiterating a long-held mistrust of their main rival.

The communique did not elaborate, but the most common Gulf Arab complaint relates to Bahrain, which has repeatedly accused Tehran of interference in its internal politics by provoking protests.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast dismissed the statement. "Shifting the responsibility for the domestic problems of the regional countries is a way of running away from reality, and blaming others or using oppressive methods are not the right ways to answer civil demands," he said, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA).

The oil-producing GCC states wield influence out of proportion to their sparse populations due in part to global energy and investment links, generous international aid and Saudi Arabia's role as home to Islam's two holiest sites.

Iran sees the Gulf as its own backyard and believes it has a legitimate interest in expanding its influence there.

In Manama, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid Bin Ahmed Bin Mohammed Al Khalifa told reporters on Tuesday that Iran posed a "very serious threat".

"Politically, (there is) lots of meddling in the affairs of GCC states; an environmental threat to our region from the technology used inside nuclear facilities; and there is of course the looming nuclear programme," he said, referring to Iran's disputed atomic work.

When asked about the Bahraini remarks, Mehmanparast said they were not worth responding to, ISNA said.

The Sunni Muslim-dominated Bahrain government has been struggling since early last year to suppress pro-democracy unrest led mainly by the Gulf Arab kingdom's majority Shi'ite Muslims, who say they been politically and economically marginalized, erupted last year.

Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based, has accused Shi'ite power Iran of being behind the unrest. Tehran denies this.

Bahrain's rulers brought in Saudi and United Arab Emirates forces last year to help quell the protests. Iran condemned the move, saying it could lead to regional instability.

Iran is also at odds with the United States and its allies over its disputed nuclear activities which the West fears is aimed at making nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

The GCC is made up of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait.

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian; Editing by Pravin Char)

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