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LONDON (Reuters) - Iran's Revolutionary Guards have brought down a foreign surveillance drone during a military exercise, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said on Saturday.
"We have managed to bring down a drone of the enemy. This has happened before in our country," the agency quoted war games spokesman General Hamid Sarkheli as saying in Kerman, southeast Iran, where the military exercise is taking place.
The agency gave no details on who the drone belonged to.
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said he had seen the reports. He noted that the Iranians did not specifically claim that the drone was American.
In the past, there have been incidents of Iran claiming to have seized U.S. drones.
In early January Iranian media said Iran had captured two miniature U.S.-made surveillance drones over the past 17 months.
Several drone incidents over the past year or so have highlighted tension in the Gulf as Iran and the United States flex their military capabilities in a standoff over Iran's disputed nuclear program.
Iran said in January that lightweight RQ11 Raven drones were brought down by Iranian air defense units in separate incidents in August 2011 and November 2012.
(Writing by Stephen Powell; Editing by Jon Hemming)
KARACHI (Reuters) - When Aurangzeb Farooqi survived an attempt on his life that left six of his bodyguards dead and a six-inch bullet wound in his thigh, the Pakistani cleric lost little time in turning the narrow escape to his advantage.
Recovering in hospital after the ambush on his convoy in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital, the radical Sunni Muslim ideologue was composed enough to exhort his followers to close ranks against the city's Shi'ites.
"Enemies should listen to this: my task now is Sunni awakening," Farooqi said in remarks captured on video shortly after a dozen gunmen opened fire on his double-cabin pick-up truck on December 25.
"I will make Sunnis so powerful against Shi'ites that no Sunni will even want to shake hands with a Shi'ite," he said, propped up in bed on emergency-room pillows. "They will die their own deaths, we won't have to kill them."
Such is the kind of speech that chills members of Pakistan's Shi'ite minority, braced for a new chapter of persecution following a series of bombings that have killed almost 200 people in the city of Quetta since the beginning of the year.
While the Quetta carnage grabbed world attention, a Reuters inquiry into a lesser known spate of murders in Karachi, a much bigger conurbation, suggests the violence is taking on a volatile new dimension as a small number of Shi'ites fight back.
Pakistan's Western allies have traditionally been fixated on the challenge posed to the brittle, nuclear-armed state by Taliban militants battling the army in the bleakly spectacular highlands on the Afghan frontier.
But a cycle of tit-for-tat killings on the streets of Karachi points to a new type of threat: a campaign by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and allied Pakistani anti-Shi'ite groups to rip open sectarian fault-lines in the city of 18 million people.
Police suspect LeJ, which claimed responsibility for the Quetta blasts, and its sympathizers may also be the driving force behind the murder of more than 80 Shi'ites in Karachi in the past six months, including doctors, bankers and teachers.
In turn, a number of hardline Sunni clerics who share Farooqi's suspicion of the Shi'ite sect have been killed in drive-by shootings or barely survived apparent revenge attacks. Dozens of Farooqi's followers have also been shot dead.
Discerning the motives for any one killing is murky work in Karachi, where multiple armed factions are locked in a perpetual all-against-all turf war, but detectives suspect an emerging Shi'ite group known as the Mehdi Force is behind some of the attacks on Farooqi's men.
While beleaguered secularists and their Western friends hope Pakistan will mature into a more confident democracy at general elections due in May, the spiral of killings in Karachi, a microcosm of the country's diversity, suggests the polarizing forces of intolerance are gaining ground.
"The divide is getting much bigger between Shia and Sunni. You have to pick sides now," said Sundus Rasheed, who works at a radio station in Karachi. "I've never experienced this much hatred in Pakistan."
Once the proud wearer of a silver Shi'ite amulet her mother gave her to hang around her neck, Rasheed now tucks away the charm, fearing it might serve not as protection, but mark her as a target.
"INFIDELS"
Fully recovered from the assassination attempt, Farooqi can be found in the cramped upstairs office of an Islamic seminary tucked in a side-street in Karachi's gritty Landhi neighborhood, an industrial zone in the east of the city.
On a rooftop shielded by a corrugated iron canopy, dozens of boys wearing skull caps sit cross-legged on prayer mats, imbibing a strict version of the Deobandi school of Sunni Islam that inspires both Farooqi and the foot-soldiers of LeJ.
"We say Shias are infidels. We say this on the basis of reason and arguments," Farooqi, a wiry, intense man with a wispy beard and cascade of shoulder-length curls, told Reuters. "I want to be called to the Supreme Court so that I can prove using their own books that they are not Muslims."
Farooqi, who cradled bejeweled prayer beads as he spoke, is the Karachi head of a Deobandi organization called Ahle Sunnat wal Jama'at. That is the new name for Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, a forerunner banned in 2002 in a wider crackdown on militancy by Pakistan's then army ruler, General Pervez Musharraf.
Farooqi says he opposes violence and denies any link to LeJ, but security officials believe his supporters are broadly aligned with the heavily armed group, whose leaders deem murdering Shi'ites an act of piety.
In the past year, LeJ has prosecuted its campaign with renewed gusto, emboldened by the release of Malik Ishaq, one of its founders, who was freed after spending 14 years in jail in July, 2011. Often pictured wearing a celebratory garland of pink flowers, Ishaq has since appeared at gatherings of supporters in Karachi and other cities.
In diverse corners of Pakistan, LeJ's cadres have bombed targets from mosques to snooker halls; yanked passengers off buses and shot them, and posted a video of themselves beheading a pair of trussed-up captives with a knife.
Nobody knows exactly how many Shi'ites there are in Pakistan -- estimates ranging from four to 20 percent of the population of 180 million underscore the uncertainty. What is clear is that they are dying faster than ever. At least 400 were killed last year, many from the ethnic Hazara minority in Quetta, according to Human Rights Watch, and some say the figure is far higher.
Pakistani officials suspect regional powers are stoking the fire, with donors in Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-dominated Gulf countries funding LeJ, while Shi'ite organizations turn to Iran.
Whatever factors are driving the violence, the state's ambivalent response has raised questions over the degree of tolerance for LeJ by elements in the security establishment, which has a long history of nurturing Deobandi proxies.
Under pressure in the wake of the Quetta bombings, police arrested Ishaq at his home in the eastern Punjab province on Friday under a colonial-era public order law.
But in Karachi, Farooqi and his thousands of followers project a new aura of confidence. Crowds of angry men chant "Shia infidel! Shia infidel" at rallies and burn effigies while clerics pour scorn on the sect from mosque loudspeakers after Friday prayers. A rash of graffiti hails Farooqi as a savior.
Over glasses of milky tea, he explained that his goal was to convince the government to declare Shi'ites non-Muslims, as it did to the Ahmadiyya sect in 1974, as a first step towards ostracizing the community and banning a number of their books.
"When someone is socially boycotted, he becomes disappointed and isolated. He realizes that his beliefs are not right, that people hate him," Farooqi said. "What I'm saying is that killing them is not the solution. Let's talk, let's debate and convince people that they are wrong."
CODENAME "SHAHEED"
Not far from Farooqi's seminary, in the winding lanes of the rough-and-tumble Malir quarter, Shi'ite leaders are kindling an awakening of their own.
A gleaming metallic chandelier dangles from the mirrored archway of a half-completed mosque rising near the modest offices of Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslemeen - known as MWM - a vocal Shi'ite party that has emerged to challenge Farooqi's ascent.
In an upstairs room, Ejaz Hussain Bahashti, an MWM leader clad in a white turban and black cloak, exhorts a gaggle of women activists to persuade their neighbors to join the cause.
Seated beneath a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shi'ite cleric who led the 1979 Iranian revolution, Bahashti said his organization would not succumb to what he sees as a plan by LeJ to provoke sectarian conflict.
"In our sect, if we are being killed we are not supposed to carry out reprisal attacks," he told Reuters. "If we decided to take up arms, then no part of the country would be spared from terrorism - but it's forbidden."
The MWM played a big role in sit-ins that paralyzed parts of Karachi and dozens of other towns to protest against the Quetta bombings - the biggest Shi'ite demonstrations in years. But police suspect that some in the sect have chosen a less peaceful path.
Detectives believe the small Shi'ite Mehdi Force group, comprised of about 20 active members in Karachi, is behind several of the attacks on Deobandi clerics and their followers.
The underground network is led by a hardened militant codenamed "Shaheed", or martyr, who recruits eager but unseasoned middle-class volunteers who compensate for their lack of numbers by stalking high-profile targets.
"They don't have a background in terrorism, but after the Shia killings started they joined the group and they tried to settle the score," said Superintendent of Police Raja Umar Khattab. "They kill clerics."
In November, suspected Mehdi Force gunmen opened fire at a tea shop near the Ahsan-ul-Uloom seminary, where Farooqi has a following, killing six students. A scholar from the madrasa was shot dead the next month, another student killed in January.
"It was definitely a reaction, Shias have never gone on the offensive on their own," said Deputy Inspector-General Shahid Hayat.
According to the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, a Karachi residents' group, some 68 members of Farooqi's Ahle Sunnat wal Jama'at and 85 Shi'ites were killed in the city from early September to February 19.
Police caution that it can be difficult to discern who is killing who in a vast metropolis where an array of political factions and gangs are vying for influence. A suspect has yet to be named, for example, in the slaying of two Deobandi clerics and a student in January whose killer was caught on CCTV firing at point blank range then fleeing on a motorbike.
Some in Karachi question whether well-connected Shi'ites within the city's dominant political party, the Muttahida Quami Movement, which commands a formidable force of gunmen, may have had a hand in some of the more sophisticated attacks, or whether rival Sunni factions may also be involved.
Despite the growing body count, Karachi can still draw on a store of tolerance. Some Sunnis made a point of attending the Shi'ite protests - a reminder that Farooqi's adherents are themselves a minority. Yet as Karachi's murder rate sets new records, the dynamics that have kept the city's conflicts within limits are being tested.
In the headquarters of an ambulance service founded by Abdul Sattar Edhi, once nominated for a Nobel Prize for devoting his life to Karachi's poor, controllers are busier than ever dispatching crews to ferry shooting victims to the morgue.
"The best religion of all is humanity," said Edhi, who is in his 80s, surveying the chaotic parade of street life from a chair on the pavement outside. "If religion doesn't have humanity, then it is useless."
(Editing by Robert Birsel)
ROME (Reuters) - Italians began voting on Sunday in one of the most closely watched elections in years, with markets nervous about whether it will produce a strong government to pull Italy out of recession and help resolve the euro zone debt crisis.
A huge final rally by anti-establishment-comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo on Friday before a campaigning ban kicked in has highlighted public anger at traditional parties and added to uncertainty about the election outcome.
Voters started casting their ballots at 0700 GMT. Polling booths will remain open until 2100 GMT on Sunday and between 0600-1400 GMT on Monday. Exit polls will come out soon after voting ends and official results are expected by early Tuesday.
The election is being followed closely by financial markets with memories still fresh of the potentially catastrophic debt crisis that brought technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti to power more than a year ago.
Italy, the euro zone's third-largest economy, is stuck in deep recession, struggling under a public debt burden second only to Greece's in the 17-member currency bloc and with a public weary of more than a year of harsh austerity policies.
Final polls published two weeks ago showed center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani with a 5-point lead, but analysts disagree about whether he will be able to form a stable majority that can push though the economic reforms Italy needs.
Bersani is now thought to be just a few points ahead of center-right rival Silvio Berlusconi, the four-times prime minister who has promised tax refunds and staged a media blitz in an attempt to win back voters.
BERLUSCONI CRITICISM
Berlusconi hogged the headlines on Sunday after he broke the campaign silence the previous evening attack magistrates, saying they were "more dangerous than the Sicilian mafia" and had invented allegations he held sex parties to discredit him.
The 76-year-old billionaire, who faces several trials on charges ranging from fraud to sex with an underage prostitute, was criticized by his election rivals for making the comments after the campaigning ban had come into force.
While the center left is still expected to gain control of the lower house, thanks to rules that guarantee a strong majority to whichever party wins the most votes nationally, a much closer battle will be fought in the Senate, which any government also needs to control to be able to pass laws.
Seats in the upper house are awarded on a region-by-region basis, meaning that support in key regions can decisively influence the overall result.
Pollsters still believe the most likely outcome is a center-left government headed by Bersani and possibly backed by Monti, who is leading a centrist coalition.
But strong campaigning by Berlusconi and the fiery Grillo, who has drawn tens of thousands to his election rallies, have thrown the election wide open, causing concern that there may be no clear winner.
Surveys have shown up to 5 million voters are expected to make up their minds at the last minute, adding to uncertainty.
Italy's Interior Ministry urged some 47 million eligible voters to not let bad weather forecasts put them off, and said it was prepared to handle snowy conditions in some northern regions to ensure everyone had a chance to vote.
STAGNANT ECONOMY
Whatever government emerges from the vote will have the task of pulling Italy out of its longest recession for 20 years and reviving an economy largely stagnant for two decades.
The main danger for Italy and the euro zone is a weak government incapable of taking firm action, which would rattle investors and could ignite a new debt crisis.
Monti replaced Berlusconi in November 2011 after Italy came close to Greek-style financial meltdown while the center-right government was embroiled in scandals.
The former European Commissioner launched a tough program of spending cuts, tax hikes and pension reforms which won widespread international backing and helped restore Italy's credibility abroad after the scandals of the Berlusconi era.
Italy's borrowing costs have since fallen sharply after the European Central Bank pledged it was prepared to support countries undertaking reforms by buying unlimited quantities of their bonds on the markets.
But economic austerity has fuelled anger among Italians grappling with rising unemployment and shrinking disposable incomes, encouraging many to turn to Grillo, who has tapped into a national mood of disenchantment.
(Editing by Alison Williams)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - A U.N.-mediated peace deal aimed at ending two decades of conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo was signed on Sunday by leaders of Africa's Great Lakes region in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
African leaders failed to sign the pact last month due to concerns over who would command a new regional force that will deploy in eastern Congo and take on armed groups operating in the region.
Leaders from Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Republic and South Sudan were present at the signing, alongside U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
(Reporting by Aaron Maasho; Editing by George Obulutsa and Janet Lawrence)
N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Thirteen Chadian soldiers were killed in fighting in northern Mali on Friday, the heaviest casualties sustained by French and African troops since the launch of a military campaign against Islamist rebels there six weeks ago, Chad's army said.
Chadian troops killed 65 al Qaeda-linked fighters in the clashes that began before midday in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains near Mali's northern border with Algeria.
"The provisional toll is ... on the enemy's side, five vehicles destroyed and 65 terrorists killed. We deplore the deaths of 13 of our valiant soldiers," said a statement from the army general staff read on state radio.
France intervened in its former West African colony last month to stop a southward offensive by Islamist rebels who seized control of the north last April.
Troops from neighboring African nations - including 2,000 soldiers from Chad - have since deployed to Mali and are meant to take over leadership of the operation when French forces begin a planned withdrawal next month.
But continuing violence since the Islamists were driven from major urban areas highlights the risk of French and African forces becoming entangled in a messy guerrilla war as they try to help Mali's weak army counter bombings and armed raids.
(Reporting by Madjiasra Nako; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Jon Hemming and Peter Cooney)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Americans on Friday "I am back and so is Japan" and vowed to get the world's third biggest economy growing again and to do more to bolster security and the rule of law in an Asia roiled by territorial disputes.
Abe had firm words for China in a policy speech to a top Washington think-tank, but also tempered his remarks by saying he had no desire to escalate a row over islets in the East China Sea that Tokyo controls and Beijing claims.
"No nation should make any miscalculation about firmness of our resolve. No one should ever doubt the robustness of the Japan-U.S. alliance," he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"At the same time, I have absolutely no intention to climb up the escalation ladder," Abe said in a speech in English.
After meeting U.S. President Barack Obama on his first trip to Washington since taking office in December in a rare comeback to Japan's top job, he said he told Obama that Tokyo would handle the islands issue "in a calm manner."
"We will continue to do so and we have always done so," he said through a translator, while sitting next to Obama in the White House Oval Office.
Tension surged in 2012, raising fears of an unintended military incident near the islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China. Washington says the islets fall under a U.S.-Japan security pact, but it is eager to avoid a clash in the region.
Abe said he and Obama "agreed that we have to work together to maintain the freedom of the seas and also that we would have to create a region which is governed based not on force but based on an international law."
Abe, whose troubled first term ended after just one year when he abruptly quit in 2007, has vowed to revive Japan's economy with a mix of hyper-easy monetary policy, big spending, and structural reform. The hawkish leader is also boosting Japan's defense spending for the first time in 11 years.
"Japan is not, and will never be, a tier-two country," Abe said in his speech. "So today ... I make a pledge. I will bring back a strong Japan, strong enough to do even more good for the betterment of the world."
'ABENOMICS' TO BOOST TRADE
The Japanese leader stressed that his "Abenomics" recipe would be good for the United States, China and other trading partners.
"Soon, Japan will export more, but it will import more as well," Abe said in the speech. "The U.S. will be the first to benefit, followed by China, India, Indonesia and so on."
Abe said Obama welcomed his economic policy, while Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said the two leaders did not discuss currencies, in a sign that the U.S. does not oppose "Abenomics" despite concern that Japan is weakening its currency to export its way out of recession.
The United States and Japan agreed language during Abe's visit that could set the stage for Tokyo to join negotiations soon on a U.S.-led regional free trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
In a carefully worded statement following the meeting between Obama and Abe, the two countries reaffirmed that "all goods would be subject to negotiations if Japan joins the talks with the United States and 10 other countries.
At the same time, the statement envisions a possible outcome where the United States could maintain tariffs on Japanese automobiles and Japan could still protect its rice sector.
"Recognizing that both countries have bilateral trade sensitivities, such as certain agricultural products for Japan and certain manufactured products for the United States, the two governments confirm that, as the final outcome will be determined during the negotiations, it is not required to make a prior commitment to unilaterally eliminate all tariffs upon joining the TPP negotiations," the statement said.
Abe repeated that Japan would not provide any aid for North Korea unless it abandoned its nuclear and missile programs and released Japanese citizens abducted decades ago to help train spies.
Pyongyang admitted in 2002 that its agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s. Five have been sent home, but Japan wants better information about eight who Pyongyang says are dead and others Tokyo believes were also kidnapped.
Abe also said he hoped to have a meeting with new Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who takes over as president next month, and would dispatch Finance Minister Taro Aso to attend the inauguration of incoming South Korean President Park Geun-hye next week.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Doug Palmer; Editing by David Brunnstrom and Paul Simao)
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's opposition attacked President Mohammed Mursi on Friday for calling elections during a national crisis, but face a test of unity in challenging Islamists who have won every poll since the 2011 revolution.
No sooner had Mursi called the parliamentary polls on Thursday than liberals and leftists accused him of deepening divisions between Islamists and their opponents. Some threatened to boycott voting which starts on April 27th and finishes in late June.
Voting is held in stages due to a shortage of election monitors and Mursi's choice of dates upset the Christian minority, which makes up about 10 percent of the population.
AlKalema, a Christian Coptic group, criticized the presidency for setting the first round to fall on the community's Easter religious holiday.
"This is total negligence of the Coptic community but an intentional move to exclude them from political life," AlKalema said in a statement. Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris made similar statements criticizing the vote timing.
Egypt's state TV Channel One and Nile TV said later in separate scrolling news headlines that the presidency would change the date of the parliamentary vote because it falls on Coptic Easter holidays, in an effort to appease the Coptic minority. But no official statement was issued by the presidency to that effect.
Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood which backs Mursi, dominated the old lower house, which was dissolved last year by court order. The new parliament will face tough decisions as Egypt is seeking an IMF loan deal which would ease its financial crisis but demand unpopular austerity.
Mursi called the elections, to be held in four stages around the country, hoping they can conclude Egypt's turbulent transition to democracy which began with the overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak by popular protests.
Islamists hailed elections as the only way out of Egypt's political and economic crisis. However, liberal politician Mohamed ElBaradei said holding polls without reaching a national consensus would further "inflame the situation".
"The insistence on polarization, exclusion and oppression along with ... the deteriorating economic and security situation will lead us to the abyss," ElBaradei, a former United Nations agency chief, said on his Twitter feed.
Egypt is split between the Islamists, who want national life to observe religion more closely, and opposition groups which hold a wide variety of visions for the future.
Across Egypt there were scattered protests in Alexandria and Port Said, while a demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir Square was muted as a sandstorm enveloped the capital.
Like the fractious opposition, the demonstrators had widely varying demands. Some called on Mursi to step down while others pressed for the military, which long backed Mubarak and his predecessors, to step back in to run Egypt.
BOYCOTT DECISION
The National Salvation Front (NSF), which groups a number of parties opposed to the Islamists, said it would hammer out its stand on the elections.
"We will meet early next week to decide on whether we will boycott or go ahead with elections. But as you can see, the opposition overall is upset over this unilateral decision on part of the presidency. This was a rushed decision," said NSF spokesman Khaled Dawood.
Dawood said Egypt should have other priorities such as changing the controversial new constitution produced last year by an assembly dominated by Islamists. "Solve these issues first then talk about elections," added Dawood.
While the opposition can agree on attacking Mursi, previous boycott threats have fizzled out. It remains fractured and disorganized, unlike the well-financed and efficient Islamist election machines which have triumphed in votes for the presidency and parliament.
"We face a difficult political decision and time is running out. The opposition faces a test of its ability to remain united," said Amr Hamzawy, a professor of politics at Cairo University and former liberal lawmaker.
ISLAMISTS READY FOR VOTE
Islamist parties and groups welcomed the new elections and dismissed the boycott threat.
"Elections are the only way out of the crisis. The people must be able to choose those they see fit. The majority of political forces will not boycott the elections," said Tarek al-Zumor of the Building and Development Party.
Essam Erian, member of the Muslim Brotherhood's ruling Freedom and Justice Party, said parliament would unite Egypt's political life.
"The coming parliament will hold a variety of national voices: Islamist, conservative, liberal and leftist. Everyone realizes the importance of the coming period and withholding one's vote is a big mistake," Erian said on his Facebook page.
Islamists are likely to form coalitions and dominate the new parliament as they did in the previous short-lived lower house, which was dissolved after the Constitutional Court struck down the law used to elect it.
(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and AbdelRahman Youssef in Alexandria.; Writing by Marwa Awad; Editing by Jason Webb and Eric Walsh)
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Sunday warned the top U.S. military commander stationed in South Korea that his forces would "meet a miserable destruction" if they go ahead with scheduled military drills with South Korean troops, North Korean state media said.
Pak Rim-su, chief delegate of the North Korean military mission to the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, gave the message by phone to Gen. James Thurman, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, KCNA news agency said.
It came amid escalating tension on the divided Korean peninsula after the North's third nuclear test earlier this month, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, drew harsh international condemnation.
A direct message from the North's Panmunjom mission to the U.S. commander is rare.
North and South Korea are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
The U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command is holding an annual computer-based simulation war drill, Key Resolve, from March 11 to 25, involving 10,000 South Korean and 3,500 U.S. troops.
The command also plans to hold Foal Eagle joint military exercises involving land, sea and air manoeuvres. About 200,000 Korean troops and 10,000 U.S. forces are expected to be mobilized for the two month-long exercise which starts on March 1.
"If your side ignites a war of aggression by staging the reckless joint military exercises...at this dangerous time, from that moment your fate will be hung by a thread with every hour," Pak was quoted as saying.
"You had better bear in mind that those igniting a war are destined to meet a miserable destruction."
Washington and Seoul regularly hold military exercises which they say are purely defensive. North Korea, which has stepped up its bellicose threats towards the United States and South Korea in recent months, sees them as rehearsals for invasion.
North Korea threatened South Korea with "final destruction" during a debate at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Sung-won Shim; Editing by Nick Macfie)
CAIRO (Reuters) - The opposition Syrian National Coalition is willing to negotiate a peace deal to end the country's civil war but President Bashar al-Assad must step down and cannot be a party to any settlement, members agreed after debating a controversial initiative by their president.
The meeting of the 70-member Western, Arab and Turkish-backed coalition began on Thursday before Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem is due for talks in Moscow, one of Assad's last foreign allies, and as U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi renews efforts for a deal.
After an angry late night session in which coalition president Moaz Alkhatib came under strong criticism from Islamist and liberal members alike for proposing talks with Assad's government without setting what they described as clear goals, the coalition adopted a political document that demands Assad's removal and trial for the bloodshed, members said.
A draft document seen by Reuters that was circulated for debate said Assad cannot be party to any political solution and has to be tried, but did not directly call for his removal.
"We have adopted the political document that sets the parameters for any talks. The main addition to the draft is a clause about the necessity of Assad stepping step down," said Abdelbasset Sida, a member of the coalition's 12 member politburo who has criticized Alkhatib for acting alone.
"We removed a clause about a need for Russian and U.S. involvement in any talks and added that the coalition's leadership has to be consulted before launching any future initiatives," he added.
Still, the agreement marked a softening of tone by the coalition because previously it had insisted that Assad must step down before any talks with his government could begin.
In an indication that Syria's strongman remains defiant, Brahimi said Assad had told him he will remain president until his term ends in 2014 and then run for re-election.
Brahimi told al-Arabiya television he wants to see a transitional government formed in Syria that would not answer to any higher authority and lasts until U.N.-supervised elections take place in the country.
"I am of the view that U.N. peacekeepers should come to Syria as happened in other countries," Brahimi said.
BOMB, AIR STRIKES
The opposition front convened in Cairo on a day when a car bomb jolted central Damascus, killing 53 people, wounding 200 and incinerating cars on a busy highway close to the Russian Embassy and offices of the ruling Baath Party.
Syrian state television blamed the suicide blast on "terrorists". Central Damascus has been relatively insulated from the 23-month conflict that has killed around 70,000 people, but the bloodshed has shattered suburbs around the capital.
In the southern city of Deraa near the border with Jordan, activists said warplanes bombed the old quarter for the first time since March 2011, when the town set in a wheat-growing plain rose up against Assad, starting a national revolt.
A rebel officer in the Tawheed al-Janoub brigade which led an offensive this week in Deraa said there were at least five air strikes on Thursday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 18 people were killed, including eight rebel fighters.
Coalition member Munther Makhos, who was forced into exile in the 1970s for his opposition to Assad's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, said supplies from Iran and Russia were giving government forces an awesome firepower advantage.
"It would be surreal to imagine that a political solution is possible. Bashar al-Assad will not send his deputy to negotiate his removal. But we are keeping the door open," Makhos said.
Makhos is the only Alawite in the Islamist-dominated coalition. The Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam which accounts for about 10 percent of Syria's population but makes up most of the intelligence apparatus and dominates the army and the political system, has generally remained behind Assad.
With Alawites feeling increasingly threatened by a violent Sunni backlash, Alkhatib, a cleric from Damascus who played a role in the peaceful protest movement against Assad at the beginning of the uprising in 2011, has been calling on Alawites to join the revolution, saying their participation will help preserve the social fabric of the country.
Alkhatib's supporters say the initiative has popular support inside Syria from people who want to see a peaceful departure of Assad and a halt to the war that has increasingly pitted his fellow Alawites against Syria's Sunni Muslim majority.
But rebel fighters on the ground, over whom Alkhatib has little control, are generally against the proposal.
The Syrian Islamic Liberation Front, which represents armed brigades, said in a statement it was opposed to Alkhatib's initiative because it ignored the revolt's goal of "the downfall of the regime and all its symbols".
"We are demanding his accountability for the bloodshed and destruction he has wreaked. I think the message is clear enough," said veteran opposition campaigner Walid al-Bunni, who supports Alkhatib.
Alkhatib formulated the initiative in broad terms last month after talks with the Russian and Iranian foreign ministers in Munich but without consulting the coalition, catching the umbrella organization by surprise.
Among Alkhatib's critics is the Muslim Brotherhood, the only organized group in the political opposition.
A Brotherhood source said the group will not scuttle the proposal because it was confident Assad is not interested in a negotiated exit, which could help convince the international community to support the armed struggle for his removal.
"Russia is key," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We are showing the international community that we are willing to take criticism from the street but the problem is Assad and his inner circle. They do not want to leave."
PLAY FOR RUSSIA
Russia hopes Alkhatib will visit soon in search of a breakthrough. Bunni said Alkhatib would not go to Moscow without the coalition's approval and that he would not be there at the same time as Moualem.
"In my opinion Alkhatib should not go to Moscow until Russia stops sending arms shipments to the Assad regime," Bunni said.
Formal backing by the coalition for Alkhatib's initiative gives it more weight internationally and undermines Assad supporters' argument that the opposition is too divided to be considered a serious player, opposition sources said.
Coalition members and diplomats based in the region said Brahimi asked Alkhatib in Cairo last week to seek full coalition backing for his plan, which resembles the U.N. envoy's own ideas for a negotiated settlement.
One diplomat in contact with the opposition and the United Nations had said a coalition approval of Alkhatib's initiative could help change the position of Russia, which has blocked several United Nations Security Council resolutions on Syria.
The diplomat said only a U.N. resolution could force Assad to the negotiating table, and a U.N. "stabilization force" may still be needed to prevent an all-out slide into a civil war.
"Brahimi has little hope that Assad will agree to any serious talks," the diplomat said. "Differences are narrowing between the United States and Russia about Syria but Moscow remains the main obstacle for Security Council action."
(Editing by Paul Taylor and Mohammad Zargham)
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, a defiant step that will worry Western powers ahead of a resumption of talks with Tehran next week.
In a confidential report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had been put in place at the facility near the town of Natanz in central Iran. They were not yet operating.
If launched successfully, such machines could enable Iran to speed up significantly its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used to devise a nuclear weapon. Iran says it is refining uranium only for peaceful energy purposes.
Iran's installation of new-generation centrifuges would be "yet another provocative step," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.
White House spokesman Jay Carney warned Iran that it would face further pressure and isolation if it failed to address international concerns about its nuclear program in the February 26 talks with world powers in the Kazakh city of Almaty.
Britain's Foreign Office said the IAEA's finding was of "serious concern". Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the report "proves that Iran continues to advance swiftly towards the red line" that he laid down last year.
Netanyahu, who has strongly hinted at possible military action if sanctions and diplomacy fail to halt Iran's nuclear drive, told the United Nations in September Iran must not be allowed to amass enough higher-enriched uranium to make even a single warhead.
Iran denies Western accusations that it is seeking to develop a capability to make atomic bombs. Tehran says it is Israel's assumed nuclear arsenal that threatens peace.
Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told Iranian media the U.N. agency's report showed "no evidence of diversion of material and nuclear activities towards military purposes."
U.S. lawmakers meanwhile are crafting a bill designed to stop the European Central Bank from handling business from the Iranian government, a U.S. congressional aide said on Thursday, in an attempt to keep Tehran from using euros to develop its nuclear program.
In the early stages of drafting, it would target the ECB's cross-border payment system and impose U.S. economic penalties on entities that use the European Central Bank to do business with Iran's government, the aide said on condition of anonymity.
The aide disclosed the new push for sanctions ahead of fresh talks on Tuesday in which major powers hope to persuade the Iranian government to rein in its atomic activities, which the West suspects may be a cover to develop a bomb capability.
RISING WESTERN PRESSURE
It was not clear how many of the new centrifuges Iran aims to install at Natanz, which is designed for tens of thousands.
An IAEA note informing member states late last month about Iran's plans implied that it could be up to 3,000 or so.
Iran has for years been trying to develop centrifuges more efficient than the erratic 1970s IR-1 model it now uses, but their introduction for full-scale production has been dogged by delays and technical hurdles, experts and diplomats say.
The deployment of the new centrifuges underlines Iran's continued refusal to bow to Western pressure to curb its nuclear program, and may further complicate efforts to resolve the dispute diplomatically, without a spiral into Middle East war.
Iran has also started testing two new centrifuge types, the IR-6 and IR-6s, at a research and development facility, the IAEA report said. Centrifuges spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope in uranium.
In a more encouraging sign for the powers, however, the IAEA report said Iran in December resumed converting some of its uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent to oxide powder for the production of reactor fuel.
That helped restrain the growth of Iran's higher-grade uranium stockpile since the previous report in November, a development that could buy more time for diplomacy.
The report said Iran had increased to 167 kg (367 pounds) its stockpile of 20 percent uranium - a level it says it needs to make fuel for a Tehran research reactor but which also takes it much closer to weapons-grade material if processed further.
NEW OFFER TO IRAN
One diplomat familiar with the report said this represented a rise of about 18-19 kg since November, a notable slowdown from the previous three-month period when the stockpile jumped by nearly 50 percent after Iran halted conversion.
Israel last year gave a rough deadline of mid-2013 as the date by which Tehran could have enough higher-grade uranium to produce a single atomic bomb if processed further. Experts say about 240-250 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium would be needed.
But a resumption of conversion, experts say, means the Israeli "red line" for action could be postponed.
Refined uranium can fuel nuclear energy plants, which is Iran's stated aim, or provide the core of an atomic bomb, which the United States and Israel suspect may be its ultimate goal.
Next week's talks between the six powers and Iran to try again to break the impasse in the decade-old dispute are their first since mid-2012, but analysts expect no real progress toward defusing suspicions that Iran is seeking atomic bomb capability.
The United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany - a group known as the P5+1 - want Iran to halt 20 percent enrichment and shut the Fordow underground plant where this takes place.
Iran wants them to recognize what it regards as its right to refine uranium for peaceful purpose and to relax increasingly strict sanctions battering its oil-dependent economy.
The powers plan to offer to ease sanctions that bar trade in gold and other precious metals with Iran in return for Iranian steps to shut down the nation's newly expanded Fordow uranium enrichment plant, Western officials told Reuters on Friday.
A U.S. official said the United States was ready to meet bilaterally with Iran in Almaty, something he said Tehran had not agreed to since 2009, when Iranian officials initially appeared to accept a deal on curbing the nuclear program and then backed away.
"You've heard us say repeatedly we are open to meeting bilaterally within the context of P5+1," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I fully expect we'll be ready to meet them bilaterally if they are willing. We'll see in Almaty."
In Paris, deputy foreign ministry spokesman Vincent Floreani said the powers were ready to make a new offer to Iran with "significant new elements" and that they hoped Tehran would engage seriously in the negotiations.
Iran has suggested that shutting down Fordow in exchange for a lifting of gold sanctions would not be acceptable.L6N0BI4A3]
(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris,; Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich,; Rachelle Younglai, Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Paul Carrel in Frankfurt; Editing by Roger Atwood and David Brunnstrom)
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's cancer-stricken president, Hugo Chavez, is still suffering respiratory problems after surgery in Cuba two months ago, the government said on Thursday in a somber first communiqué since his homecoming this week.
Struggling to talk and breathing through a tracheal tube, the 58-year-old socialist leader is being treated at a Caracas military hospital after returning unseen before dawn on Monday.
Long accustomed to the drama and speculation over Chavez's health since cancer was first detected in June 2011, Venezuelans are now debating if he can recover and return to active rule, or may resign and try to ensure his vice president wins a vote.
Some think he may have simply come home to die.
"The breathing insufficiency that emerged post-operation persists, and the tendency has not been favorable, so it is still being treated," read the communiqué, in gloomy news for Chavez's millions of passionate supporters.
The short statement, read by Information Minister Ernesto Villegas, said, however, that treatment for Chavez's "base illness" - presumably the cancer first diagnosed in his pelvic area - continued without "significant adverse effects for now."
SPECULATION AND SECRECY
Little detailed medical information has been made public on Chavez's condition, meaning the government's occasional short statements are pored over by Venezuelans for clues about the future for him and the nation he has dominated since 1999.
Chavez is believed to be seeing only close family at the hospital and a few senior officials, including Vice President Nicolas Maduro and National Assembly head Diosdado Cabello.
"The patient remains in communication with relatives and the government political group in close collaboration with the medical team," the statement added.
"The president holds firm to Christ, with absolute will to live and maximum discipline in the treatment of his health."
Apart from a few photos of him lying in a Havana hospital bed that were released by the government last week, Chavez has not been seen or heard from in public since his December 11 operation, his fourth surgery for cancer in just 18 months.
He returned home at 2:30 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) on Monday without any of the fanfare or media attention that accompanied previous homecomings after treatment in Cuba.
A source at the military hospital said there was tight security surrounding Chavez's ninth-floor suite, and that the only doctors treating the president there were Cubans.
Staircases were sealed off with bars, the source said, and the area was covered by armed patrols and surveillance cameras.
Chavez originally chose to be treated in Cuba - where he has spent more than five months in total since mid-2011 - due to his friendship with leaders Fidel and Raul Castro, plus the discretion guaranteed on the tightly controlled island.
But in recent weeks, officials said, he had been pining to come home and listening to music from the his boyhood home in the "llanos" or plains in central Venezuela.
Vigils are being held across the nation, while politicians are quietly gearing up for a possible new presidential election.
Should Chavez leave power, a vote would have to be held within 30 days. His No. 2, Maduro, would likely run against opposition leader and state governor Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chavez in last year's presidential election.
(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Peter Cooney)
ROME (Reuters) - Authorities are checking if a wreck found on a beach of the island of Curacao could be that of a plane carrying fashion executive Vittorio Missoni which disappeared last month, Italian news wire Ansa reported on Friday, citing local sources.
Missoni, the eldest son of the founders of the Missoni fashion house, disappeared with his wife and four others when their plane went missing off the coast of Venezuela in early January.
Italian investigators later said the airline that owned the plane was not fully licensed to operate and that the pilot's license had expired more than a month before the flight.
(Reporting by Naomi O'Leary; Editing by Stephen Jewkes and Pravin Char)
LONDON (Reuters) - Major powers are ready to make "a substantial and serious offer" to Iran during talks next week in return for concessions on its nuclear program, a Western diplomat said on Wednesday.
He declined to give details of the offer - aimed at reviving efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to long-stalled talks over Iran's disputed nuclear work.
"We will take an offer with us which we believe to be a substantial and serious offer," the diplomat said of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan. "This is an offer which we think has significant new elements in it."
The West has imposed heavy economic sanctions on Iran to persuade it to abandon those parts of its program the powers suspect are intended to give it nuclear weapons capability.
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian purposes only.
"Diplomats are committed to finding a diplomatic solution, but the government of Iran really has to show that it's doing what it says it's doing," the diplomat said, on condition of anonymity.
The five permanent members of the Security Council along with Germany - the so-called P5+1 - will hold talks with Iran in Almaty on February 26.
Western officials in Washington have told Reuters they plan to offer to ease sanctions barring trade in gold and other precious metals in return for Iran shutting its Fordow uranium enrichment plant - a proposal already rejected by Tehran.
The Western diplomat declined to comment on that, nor to say in what way the offer to be made in Almaty would differ.
Another Western diplomat said hopes for the meeting were not "sky high" but the talks were being viewed as an opportunity to engage with Iran. "It's an open and positive offer and we hope that they will respond," he said.
"We've always offered quite a bit. The original offer in 2008 was a very generous offer, very comprehensive and that is still basically there on the table and what we're offering now is more precision about certain elements of that," he added.
The 2008 offer both acknowledged Iran's right to a civilian nuclear program and recognized its need for broader security guarantees against attack.
SANCTIONS SEEN BITING
Western diplomats argue that sanctions are taking their toll on Iran's economy and hoping as a result the new diplomatic push could succeed where past attempts have failed.
The negotiations held by the P5+1 also follow a renewed offer by the United States to hold direct talks with Iran if it showed it was serious about reining in its nuclear program.
Any broader political dialogue between the United States and Iran would be aimed at reducing mistrust dating back to the 1979 Iranian revolution and seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Such a dialogue would be a means of giving additional momentum to existing negotiations on Tehran's nuclear program.
Iran has given little indication of what it would bring to the table in Almaty.
It rejected the offer of an easing of sanctions on gold trade as unacceptable and its ability to make significant concessions is seen as limited before Iranian presidential elections in June.
It has, however, resumed work to convert small amounts of higher-grade enriched uranium into fuel, a move which would slow its accumulation of stockpiles that could, if enriched further, be used for weapons.
Diplomats say it has also held off from putting into operational additional centrifuges at Fordow where it enriches uranium to 20 percent - a level that can be rapidly turned into weapons-grade material.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to issue shortly its latest report on Iran, which will indicate the size of its stockpiles of enriched uranium and detail other developments in its nuclear program.
(Additional reporting by Lou Charbonneau and Michele Nichols; Editing by Alison Williams)
IGUALA, Mexico (Reuters) - Dozens of people were abducted and murdered by Mexican security forces over the past six years during a gruesome war with drug cartels, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, urging President Enrique Pena Nieto to overhaul the military justice system.
The rights group said that since 2007 it has documented 149 cases of people who were never seen again after falling into the hands of security forces, and that the government failed to properly investigate the "disappearances."
"The result was the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades," the U.S.-based group said. (Human Rights Watch report: http://r.reuters.com/fyk26t)
It recommended reforming Mexico's military justice system and creating a national database to link the missing with the thousands of unidentified bodies that piled up during the military-led crackdown on drug cartels.
The report was a grim reminder of the dark side of the war on drug cartels that killed an estimated 70,000 people during former President Felipe Calderon's six-year presidency.
The report also illustrates the obstacles that President Pena Nieto, who took office in December, faces in trying to stem the violence, restore order over areas of the country controlled by the drug cartels and end abuses by security forces.
For nearly three years, 56-year-old shopkeeper Maria Orozco has sought to discover the fate of her son. She says he was abducted along with five colleagues by soldiers from the nightclub where they worked in Iguala, a parched town south of the Mexican capital.
She says a grainy security video, submitted anonymously, shows the moment in 2010 when local soldiers rounded up the men.
"We used to see the military like Superman or Batman or Robin. Super heroes," said Orozco. "Now the spirit of the whole country has turned against them."
Hers was one of the cases illustrated in the Human Rights Watch report.
Pena Nieto has vowed to take a different tack to his predecessor Calderon and focus on reducing violent crime and extortion rather than on going head to head with drug cartels.
The government last month introduced a long-delayed law to trace victims of the drug war and compensate the families. It says it is moving ahead with plans to roll out a genetic database to track victims and help families locate the disappeared.
"There exists, in theory, a database with more than 27,000 people on it," said Lia Limon, deputy secretary of human rights at Mexico's interior ministry. "It's a job that's beginning."
Still, impunity remains rife. The armed forces opened nearly 5,000 investigations into criminal wrongdoing between 2007 and 2012, but only 38 ended in sentencing, according to Human Rights Watch.
In its report it describes the impact of the disappearances on victims' families, a daily reality for Ixchel Mireles, a 50-year-old librarian from the northern city of Torreon, whose husband Hector Tapia was abducted by men in federal police uniforms.
Neither Mireles nor her daughter has heard from Tapia since that night in June 2010.
"I want him to be alive, but the reality just destroys me," said Mireles. "I just want them to give him back, even if he is dead."
Since her husband's disappearance, Mireles has struggled financially, having lost his 40,000 pesos ($3,143) a month salary. She has moved her daughter to a cheaper university and can barely keep up payments on her house.
"I now travel by foot," she said, noting that Mexico's social security system does not recognize the disappeared.
Some family members of the disappeared have asked for soldiers guilty of rights abuses to be judged like civilians, a move Mexico's Supreme Court has approved.
"To us it just seems that the military is untouchable," said Laura Orozco, 36, who says she witnessed her brother's military-led abduction. "They're bulletproof."
($1 = 12.73 pesos)
(Additional reporting by Michael O'Boyle,; Editing by Simon Gardner, Kieran Murray and Lisa Shumaker)
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be seeking to put a strong U.S.-Japan alliance on full display in the face of potential threats from a nuclear North Korea and an assertive China when he meets U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday.
Abe, who has kept his ratings high since taking office in December, also needs Obama's signoff on his economic revival recipe of big spending and hyper-easy monetary policy.
Expectations for "Abenomics" - especially drastic monetary easing - have sliced about 10 percent off the yen's value against the dollar since Abe took office, raising concern abroad that Japan is weakening its currency to export its way out of recession.
"The situation in East Asia is becoming more and more precarious," said Mikitaka Masuyama, a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. "One of the things he wants to achieve will be reinforcement of the Japan-U.S. alliance."
"It would be a successful trip for Abe if his economic policy wins a nod from the U.S. side or at least if it is not rejected outright," he added.
Abe, who leaves for Washington on Thursday, also hopes to secure at least a wink and a nod from Obama that would allow him to argue that Japan can negotiate special treatment for politically sensitive sectors such as rice if it joins talks on a U.S.-led free trade pact.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that Tokyo must be willing to negotiate all trade sectors, but did not rule out the possibility of special treatment in the final deal.
Japan's big businesses wants it to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal to avoid being left behind in global competition, but powerful farm lobby groups are opposed, dividing Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
SHOULDER TO SHOULDER
Aides say Abe's top priority for the visit, during which he will hold a summit on Friday with Obama and deliver a policy speech entitled "Japan is Back", is to repair an alliance they argue was dented by the 2009-2012 rule of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
"During the three years and three months of the Democratic Party government, there was a great gap in the U.S.-Japan alliance," said a close aide to Abe. "So the biggest objective is to rebuild the alliance."
Outside experts agree the alliance suffered under the first DPJ prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, who tried unsuccessfully to revise a deal to move a U.S. Marine air base to a sparsely populated part of Japan's Okinawa island.
But Abe's immediate predecessor, Yoshihiko Noda, did much to repair the damage, they say.
The two leaders will certainly spend time on the need for stronger sanctions on North Korea and are likely to discuss beefed up missile defense after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test last week.
The hawkish Abe will also be hoping that putting a robust alliance on display sends a signal to China not to escalate the row over tiny islands in the East China Sea claimed by both Japan and China.
"It is important for us to have them recognize that it is impossible to try to get their way by coercion or intimidation. In that regard, the Japan-U.S. alliance, as well as the U.S. presence, would be critical," Abe told the Washington Post in an interview.
Tension has raised fears of an unintended military incident near the islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China. Washington says the islets fall under a U.S.-Japan security pact, but it is keen to avoid a clash.
Abe is expected to come bearing one welcome gift - a promise that Japan will finally join an international treaty on settling cross-border child custody disputes, known as The Hague Convention. Japan has been the only member of the Group of Eight advanced nations not to join the pact, despite pressure from the United States and other countries.
(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington; Editing by Ron Popeski)
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has bolstered its defenses against a "hostile" United States with its third nuclear test, it said on Thursday, noting that countries that had bowed to U.S. pressure to abandon their nuclear plans had suffered "tragic consequences".
The North carried out its largest nuclear test to date last week, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, prompting warnings of tougher sanctions for the isolated and impoverished state and its young ruler, Kim Jong-un.
Libya abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 in a bid to mend relations with the United States and later saw leader Muammar Gaddafi overthrown in an uprising that was eventually supported militarily by Washington.
In apparent reference to Libya, North Korea said it never backed down.
"The tragic consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their nuclear programs... clearly prove that the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) was very far-sighted and just when it made the (nuclear) option," North Korea's KCNA news agency said.
North Korea has told China, its sole major ally, that it plans to stage more nuclear tests, according to a source with close connections to the top leadership in both countries.
It staged the latest test in response to tighter U.N. sanctions imposed in January after the country launched a long-range rocket last year in a move that critics said was designed to prove technology for an intercontinental ballistic missile.
North Korea has recently stepped up its rhetoric against South Korea, threatening to destroy its rich, democratic neighbor.
Most military assessments suggest that North Korea would lose any war against the U.S.-backed South and that its leaders would not risk a major conflict.
In 2010, North Korea was blamed for sinking a South Korean naval vessel and in the same year it shelled a South Korean island, killing four people, including two civilians.
(Reporting by David Chance; Editing by Nick Macfie)
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Rebel fighters in Damascus are disciplined, skilled and brave.
In a month on the frontline, I saw them defend a swathe of suburbs in the Syrian capital, mount complex mass attacks, manage logistics, treat their wounded - and die before my eyes.
But as constant, punishingly accurate, mortar, tank and sniper fire attested, President Bashar al-Assad's soldiers on the other side, often just a room or a grenade toss away, are also well drilled, courageous - and much better armed.
So while the troops were unable to dislodge brigades of the Free Syrian Army from devastated and depopulated neighborhoods just east of the city centre - and indeed made little effort to do so - there seems little immediate prospect of the rebels overrunning Assad's stronghold. The result is bloody stalemate.
I watched both sides mount assaults, some trying to gain just a house or two, others for bigger prizes, only to be forced back by sharpshooters, mortars or sprays of machinegun fire.
As in the ruins of Beirut, Sarajevo or Stalingrad, it is a sniper's war; men stalk their fellow man down telescopic sights, hunting a glimpse of flesh, an eyeball peering from a crack, use lures and decoys to draw their prey into giving themselves away.
Fighting is at such close quarters that on one occasion a rebel patrol stumbled into an army unit inside a building; hand grenades deafened us and shrapnel shredded plaster, a sudden clatter of Kalashnikov cartridges and bullets coming across the cramped space gave way in seconds to the groans of the wounded.
From January 14, having reached Damascus from Lebanon by way of undercover opposition networks, I spent four weeks in Ain Tarma, Mleha, Zamalka, Irbin and Harasta - rebel-held areas forming a wedge whose apex lies less than a mile to the east of the walled Old City, with its ancient mosques, churches and bazaars.
Once bustling suburbs are all but empty of life, bar the fighters; six months of combat, of shelling and occasional air strikes have broken open apartment blocks to the winter winds of the high Syrian plateau and choked the streets with rubble.
BARRICADES
Battling the cold in woollen ski-hats or chequered keffiyeh scarves, swathed in layers of cotton and leather jackets, a few thousand unshaven men, many from nearby peasant villages, some who deserted Assad's army, defend a patchwork of barricades and strongpoints, served by cars ferrying ammunition and rations and led by commanders using handheld radios and messenger runners.
Days are punctuated by regular halts for prayer in a conflict, now 23 months old, that has become increasingly one pitting Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, stiffened by Islamist radicals, against Alawites led by Assad; they have support from Iran, from whose Shi'ite Islam their faith is derived.
Typical of the frontline routine was an attack that a couple of dozen men of the brigade Tahrir al-Sham - roughly "Syrian Freedom" - mounted in Ain Tarma on January 30, aiming to take over or at least damage an army checkpoint further up the lane.
I photographed one two-man fire team crouch against a breeze-block garden wall, about 50 meters from their target.
In blue jeans, sneakers and muffled against a morning chill, their role was to wait for comrades to hit the army position with rocket-propelled grenades then rake the soldiers with their AK-47 automatic rifles as they were flushed out into the open.
There was little to make a sound in the abandoned streets. The attackers whispered to each other under their breath.
Then two shots rang out. One of the two riflemen, heavy set and balding, screamed in pain and collapsed back on the tarmac.
The day's assault was going wrong before it even started.
Another fighter crept over to help. Realizing the casualty was gravely hurt, two more came up and they dragged the man's inert bulk back across the street, through a narrow gap to relative safety.
Battlefield first-aid is helpless in the face of single shot to the belly. The man died in minutes, his gut ripped through and his blood warming the bare concrete floor. But there was no time to mourn - the army was alerted to the squad's presence.
As the rebels regrouped, a tank shell struck the deserted building, sending shattered concrete and dust raining down on us and the survivors ran for cover, ready to fight another day.
MASS ATTACK
Having captured large areas last July before the front lines again congealed in the capital, the rebels stepped up attacks last month, trying to weaken Assad's grip on the outlying neighborhoods surrounding the fortified centre of Damascus and pushing across the main ring road in the neighborhood of Jobar.
Among the boldest offensive moves I saw was an assault by what appeared to be several hundred fighters on a sprawling army barracks in the Irbin district. It was striking for the level of coordination it displayed among numerous units which, lacking uniforms, donned bandannas in bright pinks, reds and oranges to identify their loyalties and reduce the risk of "friendly fire".
One group also brought up a Soviet-built T-72 tank to take part in the February 3 attack. Crewed by men who evidently had been trained in the army, it may have had little ammunition, however.
The infantry skirmish for control of the barracks involved teams of fighters, their colorful headscarves at odds with grim faces and attempts at camouflage, stealing up to a two-meter perimeter wall that stretched for hundreds of meters around.
On a misty morning, they tried to maintain surprise, but once the shooting began there was no turning back, no sign these men might recently have been fearful civilians. They poured sustained rifle fire through gaps in the wall, tossed grenades over it and did what they could to avoid incoming rounds.
One man poked the head of a store-window manikin, fixed on a pole, into a hole in the perimeter, hoping a sniper could be tempted to betray his position. It was a wise precaution. I saw another man picked off later as he aimed through a similar gap.
By afternoon, helped by their tank, they had breached the defenses and were inside the compound, looking for enemies, intelligence and, especially, more weapons to carry off. They knew the position itself would be hard to hold - too big and open and vulnerable to familiar retaliatory air strikes.
In the end, at dusk, they pulled back. One commander said 150 of the attackers had been wounded and 20 were killed, a toll to add to the 70,000 the U.N. estimates have died in this war.
REBEL WEAPONRY
The bulk of the rebel armory is made up of Soviet- and Chinese-made AK-47s, similar to those among Assad's troops. Most rebels have one, though not always many magazines of bullets. I also saw U.S.-made M4 carbines and Austrian Steyr assault rifles not commonly supplied to the Syrian government. Western-allied Sunni Arab leaders in the Gulf have been arming the fighters.
Snipers use Russian Dragunovs and I also saw an American Barrett, a heavy-caliber rifle capable of puncturing metal.
The rebels also have rocket-propelled grenades and some heavier anti-tank weapons - at least enough to discourage their opponents from trying to roll their armor through their lines.
One day, I watched a man fire an antiquated, probably 1960s vintage, Soviet B-10 recoilless rifle, a heavy, bazooka-style cannon normally mounted on a little trolley and weighing about 70 kg (150 pounds); the rebel fighter simply hefted it onto his shoulder and blasted a heavy round somewhere down the road.
Capable of improvising, I also saw men use a shotgun to blast a fuse-lit, home-made grenade at their enemy.
Further from the fighting lines, some vestiges of ordinary life goes on for those civilians who have not joined the army of refugees. Often without electricity or running water, residents try to survive; a few shops sell vegetables, or meat kebabs. Moving around, glimpses of normality can be startling, as I found, turning a corner to find children playing in the street.
Other surprises were less pleasant. One Saturday, January 26, I was following a rebel patrol in Mleha, crawling from house to house through holes smashed in walls to evade the snipers.
Just ahead, those in front emerged to find themselves face to face with some equally astonished soldiers. Gunfire, grenades and screams followed. I threw myself to the ground. Both sides quickly pulled back, the wounded gasping and dragged to safety.
The battle for Damascus grinds on.
(Writing by Dominic Evans and Alastair Macdonald, editing by Peter Millership and Giles Elgood)
ROME (Reuters) - Regardless of who wins next weekend's parliamentary election, Italy's long economic decline is likely to continue because the next government won't be strong enough to pursue the tough reforms needed to make its economy competitive again.
Bankers, diplomats and industrialists in Rome and Milan despair at how Italians are shifting allegiances ahead of the February 24-25 vote to favor anti-establishment upstarts and show disgust with the established parties.
That makes it more likely that no bloc will have the political strength to tackle Italy's deep-rooted economic crisis, which has made it Europe's most sluggish large economy for the past two decades.
Final opinion polls predict that the vote will deliver a working majority in both houses for a centre-left coalition governing in alliance with technocrat former prime minister Mario Monti. Political risk consultancy Eurasia assigns this scenario a 50-60 percent probability.
But Italy's election for both chambers of parliament has the potential to tip the euro zone back into instability if the outcome does not produce that result.
The colorful cast of candidates includes disgraced media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, one of the world's richest men, the bespectacled academic Monti, anti-establishment comedian Beppe Grillo who campaigns from a camper van, and Nichi Vendola, a former communist poet who is the governor of Puglia.
Investors have so far taken a relaxed view, relying on polls produced until the legal deadline for surveys of Feb 10.
One of the best indicators that they are not worried: Italian benchmark 10-year bond yields, which topped six percent during the country's worst political moments in 2011, are now trading around 4.4 percent, almost a full percentage point lower than those of Spain.
Italian stocks have performed broadly in line with the wider European market since January, despite the election and a wave of scandals which has engulfed several leading Italian groups.
But observers in Italy are increasingly nervous that the rosy election scenario favored by investors may not work out.
A jaded electorate, angry about political corruption, economic mismanagement and a national crisis that has impoverished a once-wealthy member of the G7 club of rich nations, could produce a surprise.
Pier Luigi Bersani, the standard-bearer for the centre-left, is a worthy but lackluster former minister whose party has been linked to a banking scandal in the mediaeval Tuscan town of Siena. Support for his party now seems to be fading.
Opponents have latched on to the fact that the ailing bank, Monte dei Paschi, was run by a foundation dominated by political appointees from the centre-left and accused Bersani's party of presiding over a debacle that will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of euros.
CAMPER VAN POLITICS
Monti, dubbed "Rigor Montis" by one opponent for his austerity policies which critics say hurt growth, is stuck in fourth place and slipping. Detractors say he comes across poorly on the hustings and has been hurt because he formed an election alliance with two discredited centrist politicians who are emblematic of the traditional politics which Monti disavows.
The big gainer in the final days before the election, according to private surveys quoted by experts, is stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo and his anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. Grillo has been on a "tsunami tour" of Italy in a camper van, filling piazzas with his ringing denunciations of the country's political class. He campaigns mainly on the Internet, where his widely read blog features a list of Italy's parliamentarians convicted of a crime (it features 24 names).
"The big question is: what happens to Grillo?" said one senior banker in Milan, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He won't win but he could stop Bersani and Monti from getting enough seats to form an effective government."
Under the electoral law in force for this poll, which almost all Italians agree is in need of reform, voters cast ballots for a party list. The coalition with the most votes is awarded top-up seats in the lower house to give it a 55 percent majority. But in the Senate, the top-up premium applies by region.
Pollsters say the race is too close to call in a few battleground regions but there is a good chance the centre-left will fall short of a majority in the Senate, which has equal law-making powers to the lower house.
A substantial vote for Grillo's movement - and some experts suggest he could top 20 percent - could mean the new parliament is filled with new, inexperienced, anti-establishment deputies who may refuse to do deals with other politicians and block legislation. Bersani and Monti could find themselves without a workable majority in the Senate even in alliance - a scenario which Eurasia believe has a 20-30 percent probability.
"It's hard to see Grillo's movement as a source of stability," said one diplomat, speaking off the record. "There is no chance they would be part of a coalition."
CONVICTION POLITICIAN
Ironically Grillo himself will not be entering parliament regardless of how well his movement does. The shaggy-haired 63-year-old was convicted of manslaughter after three passengers died when a jeep he was driving crashed in 1981, making him ineligible for election under his own party's rules barring convicted criminals from parliament.
"Grillo's agenda is just silly," said one leading Italian columnist, speaking anonymously because his publication did not allow him to be quoted in other media before the vote.
"It's a fuck off policy. He wants to leave Europe, set up people's tribunals, halve public employees. It's the most visible symptom of Italy's political crisis."
The 5-Star Movement is not the only anti-establishment force threatening to make Italy ungovernable. The federalist Northern League, which favors greater autonomy for northern Italy, is polling around five percent nationally. Its leader Roberto Maroni told Reuters last week he would use his seats in parliament in alliance with the centre-right to block a centre-left coalition and prevent it from governing.
The League is particularly important in the Senate as its home region of Lombardy, where the party polls about 15 percent, returns by far the most senators - 49 out of a chamber of 319.
Should Grillo's movement and the Northern League win enough seats to deprive a centre-left coalition with Monti of an overall majority, the most likely outcome is a "grand coalition" of left and right, experts say.
Such a result would unsettle investors because it would be likely to bring centre-right leader former premier Berlusconi, 76, back into government in a key role and Monti would be unlikely to join it.
Berlusconi's own party has boosted its standing in polls over the past month, helped by the former premier's veteran campaigning skill and his dominance of the country's private TV channels. But nobody apart from his own supporters believes he is likely to win this time.
POPE FACTOR
Pope Benedict's unexpected resignation this month has pushed the parliamentary election off the front pages in Italy, giving Berlusconi less print space and TV air time to press his populist message. The main beneficiary appears to be Grillo, whose strategy of ignoring mainstream media and campaigning on the Internet has been unaffected by the news from the Vatican.
Investors above all want a government which will tackle the reasons for Italy's lackluster performance. Italy has hardly grown since the birth of the euro in 1999 and its economy has slumped faster since the 2007 financial crisis than any other in Europe except Greece. Last year, Italy contracted by 2.2 percent, according to official statistics.
Businessmen complain of three main obstacles: stifling bureaucracy, labor laws which offer workers so much protection that they encourage slack performance, and a dysfunctional court system which makes it hard to enforce contracts and collect debts. All are deep-rooted problems and none is likely to be tackled effectively by a weak and divided government.
"Nobody in Italy is ready to make the reforms our country needs right now," said the chief executive of a major Italian company, speaking off the record.
"I am deeply convinced that without a major change in labor flexibility, we will not be able to increase productivity. My personal experience is that Italian labor is fantastic. But if you take a very good worker and tell him his job is completely safe, you will turn him into a slacker."
Italy's byzantine court system - where cases can languish for years - and its legendary bureaucracy are major obstacles to foreign investment and competitiveness, business people and diplomats say. "Foreign companies are surprised by how hard it is to get things done here which we all thought had been agreed in Brussels 20 years ago," said one senior European diplomat.
Monti's technocratic government won plaudits from business for reforming Italy's pension system but its efforts to reform labor laws did not enjoy similar success. Monti's government lasted 13 months until Berlusconi's bloc triggered its collapse by withdrawing support. Some observers in Italy don't believe that the next parliament's make-up will be nearly as conducive to reform as the outgoing one.
MUDDLE-THROUGH OUTCOME
"I want to be optimistic but my best guess is that they will keep to this muddle-through scenario in the next parliament with lackluster results for the economy," said a second senior diplomat. "This country needs a new generation of political leaders."
Key among the concerns of diplomats and business people is the disparate nature of the centre-left coalition leading in polls.
Bersani's election alliance is made up of four main parties, stretching from the former communist Vendola through the Christian left to socialists and centrists. If it is unable to govern alone, as most polls predict, it will need the support of Monti's bloc - itself made up of three parties.
Bankers fear that a government made up of seven different groups of widely varying political hues is highly unlikely to agree on the tough, radical reform measures the country needs.
"If we have a government made up of Bersani, Monti and Vendola, they will argue all the time," said the chief executive. "Bersani and Vendola's capacity for reform is almost zero." Comparing the present Italian centre-left candidate to the former German chancellor whose successful labor reforms belied his socialist roots, he added: "Bersani is no Schroeder".
Bersani's economic spokesman Stefano Fassina insists that the centre-left fully understands the urgency of Italy's economic plight and is committed to deliver on measures to stop the rot. But he puts the emphasis on making the public sector more efficient and persuading Berlin to tone down budget austerity at a European level rather than pursuing labor reform in Italy. Fassina insists that public commitments by Bersani and Vendola on an agreed program will minimize disagreements but he does admit to concern about how a centre-left administration could work with Grillo's unpredictable forces.
"It's impossible to have any discussions with Grillo as a party," he said. "We hope that in parliament some of his MPs will be pragmatic enough to agree on reasonable measures."
With so much uncertainty about the election and the chances fading of it returning a strong, stable reformist government, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Italy's slow, steady economic decline will continue regardless of the result.
"We've seen a steady economic decline in Italy over the past 20 years and it's very hard to see any outcome from this election which will reverse that. The reforms which would really get the country going again are out of reach," concluded the European diplomat.
(Editing by Peter Millership and Giles Elgood)
SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's government resigned from office on Wednesday after nationwide protests against high electricity prices, joining a long list of European administrations felled by austerity.
Prime Minister Boiko Borisov had tried to calm protests by sacking his finance minister, pledging to cut power prices and punish foreign-owned companies but the measures failed to defuse discontent and protests continued on Tuesday.
Many Bulgarians are deeply unhappy over high energy costs, power monopolies, low living standards and corruption in the European Union's poorest country. Twenty-five people were taken to hospital after protesters clashed with police late on Tuesday.
"I will not participate in a government under which police are beating people," Borisov said as he announced his resignation on Wednesday.
The premier did not say if a parliamentary election scheduled for July would now be brought forward.
Borisov has said the electricity distribution license of central Europe's largest listed company, Czech-based CEZ will be revoked, setting Bulgaria on a collision course with its EU partner the Czech Republic.
(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Sam Cage and Pravin Char)
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek workers walked off the job on Wednesday in a nationwide protest against wage cuts and high taxes, keeping ferries docked in ports, shutting state schools and leaving hospitals working with emergency staff.
Greece's two biggest labor unions brought much of the near-bankrupt country to a standstill during a 24-hour strike over the cuts, which they say only deepen the plight of a people struggling to get through the country's worst peacetime downturn.
Representing about 2.5 million workers, the unions have gone on strike repeatedly since Europe's debt crisis erupted in late 2009, testing the government's will to implement necessary reforms in the face of growing public anger.
"The (strike) is our answer to the dead-end policies that have squeezed the life out of workers, impoverished society and plunged the economy into recession and crisis," said the private sector union GSEE, which is organizing the walkout with its public sector sister union ADEDY.
"Our struggle will continue for as long as these policies are implemented," it said.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's eight-month-old coalition government has been eager to show it will implement reforms it promised the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which have bailed Athens out twice with over 200 billion euros.
It has taken a tough line on striking workers, invoking emergency laws twice this year to order seamen and subway workers back to their jobs after week-long walkouts that paralyzed public transport in Athens and led to food shortages on islands.
But in a sign it is buckling under pressure, it announced on Monday it would not fire almost 1,900 civil servants earmarked for possible dismissal, despite promising foreign lenders it would seek to cut the public payroll.
STRIKES PICKING UP
Strikes have picked up in recent weeks, underscoring Greeks' anger at record high unemployment and poverty levels. A one-day visit by French President Francois Hollande in Athens on Tuesday went largely uncovered as Greek journalists were on strike.
In northern and central Greece, farmers have been protesting at high production costs and fuel prices for nearly a month, occasionally blocking the country's main north-south highway.
Most business and public sector activity came to a halt during Wednesday's strike, with school teachers, train and bus employees and bankers among various groups joining the walkout.
"We are on our knees. The country has been destroyed, the young people have been destroyed," said Nikos Papageorgiou, 56, a civil servant.
"I'm outraged with the Europeans and our politicians as well. They should all go to jail."
Hospitals ran on emergency staff and ships were docked in ports as seaworkers defied government orders to return to work.
Several marches are expected to culminate in demonstrations at around noon outside parliament at Syntagma square in central Athens, where protests have often ended in violent clashes between police and activists in the past.
Analysts said Greece securing bailout funds in December, which averted bankruptcy and ended months of uncertainty over the country's future in the euro zone, created expectations among Greeks that things would improve for them on a personal level as well.
"If these expectations are not satisfied by the summer, then whatever is left of the working class will respond with more protests," said Costas Panagopoulos, head of Alco pollsters.
(Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Pravin Char)
TOKYO (Reuters) - Five years after staring into a political and personal abyss, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is out to prove that the man who threw in the towel after barely a year in office has what it takes to survive as a long-term leader.
Abe, whose 2006-2007 term as premier ended with his abrupt resignation after a year plagued by scandals, an election defeat and a gastro-intestinal ailment worsened by stress, won a rare second chance when his party surged back to power in December.
This time, in an effort to show he's taking care of his health, Abe has resumed jogging and is sipping room-temperature water during parliament sessions, apparently to avoid stomach upsets. The prime minister also, media say, still consults memos reflecting on mistakes that he jotted down after quitting.
Even some opposition members say Abe and his aides display a better ability to govern than the first administration, when gaffes and scandals cost him five ministers including one who committed suicide.
"I think we can see ... the effect of lessons they learned from the first Abe administration, which gave up mid-stream," said Tetsuro Fukuyama, an upper house lawmaker whose Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ousted Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 2009, only to be crushed themselves at the polls in December.
"I don't know (if he is a changed man), but I sense that those close to him are pulling together more effectively."
That said, members of Abe's team do occasionally show signs of singing a bit out of tune.
Finance Minister and former premier Taro Aso - who some suspect of dreaming of a come-back of his own - said on Tuesday Japan had no plan to buy foreign currency-denominated bonds as part of a monetary easing program. A day earlier, Abe had said buying foreign bonds was a monetary option.
Those who know Abe say the 58-year-old leader, who goes to Washington this week with a message that Japan is reviving its economic and diplomatic strength, has learned a lot from his first term, when critics said he packed his cabinet with inexperienced cronies.
The grandson of a prime minister and scion of an elite political family, Abe was 52 when he first took office, making him Japan's youngest post-war premier. He also succeeded a popular prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, without having to fight a general election.
"He's more mature, seasoned, a sort of a 'come-back' guy after seeing hell," said Kunihiko Miyake, a former diplomat who has known Abe for years.
"Before, he was a person in a hurry and wanted results soon, impatiently. Now he is comfortable and not in a hurry," added Miyake, research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo.
COMPARISONS NOT ALWAYS ODIOUS
Critics say Abe's improved image benefits from the low bar set by predecessors, including himself. Abe is Japan's seventh prime minister since Koizumi ended a five-year term in 2006.
"He's assiduously avoiding previous mistakes," said Brad Glosserman, executive director at Pacific Forum CSIS in Hawaii.
"It's not a lot to be proud of."
Clearly, Abe has rethought his priorities, not least to avoid a repeat of the stinging 2007 upper house election loss that created a deadlock in parliament and helped seal his fate.
Abe has made reviving the economy his top priority, a big shift from his first term when his main agenda was to loosen the limits of Japan's pacifist constitution on the military and restore national pride and patriotism. Those remain vital to Abe's platform, but for now are taking something of a back seat.
Rising Tokyo share prices and support rates of over 60 percent suggest investors and voters are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to "Abenomics" - a mix of big spending and hyper-easy monetary policies with a promise of reforms to come.
"The strategy is totally different. He's clearly decided that at least until the upper house election (in July), he is going to focus on the economy," said Gerry Curtis, a Columbia University political science professor who has watched some two dozen Japanese prime ministers come and go during his career.
Well aware voters punished the Democrats for their perceived inability to govern, Abe's team is taking pains to act quickly when crises erupt, such as this month's North Korean nuclear test.
The tight grip at the top also applies to damage control. Finance Minister Aso, known for verbal bloopers, quickly retracted a remark last month that implied terminally ill old people should be allowed to die quickly to save tax money.
And a junior cabinet minister swiftly resigned this month just before a magazine was to publish a damaging article.
Early success might, ironically, carry its own risks.
"If he wins the next upper house election, he would have no obstacles in parliament," Miyake said, adding that Abe could become over-confident. "He might be tempted to rush ahead again, although I don't think he would."
A further flare-up in ties with China or South Korea, strained by territorial feuds and disputes over Japan's wartime history, could also erode Abe's image as a deft leader.
Whether Abe can survive the rough patches expected when his honeymoon with markets and voters fades remains to be seen.
"The consistency of the message is one thing that has encouraged people to think more positively," said Jeffrey Young, research director at U.S.-based hedge fund Woodbine Capital, referring to Abe's monetary easing push.
"The government must know it is all done on the basis of expectations and are wondering at what point the public, media and the markets will turn to results."
(Editing by Dean Yates)
CARACAS (Reuters) - After Hugo Chavez spent two months out of the public eye for cancer surgery in Cuba, the Venezuelan government hailed his homecoming on Monday and said the president had achieved another milestone - four million followers on Twitter.
The 58-year-old flew back from Havana before dawn and was taken to a military hospital. No new details were given on his health, and there were no images of his arrival. Officials say his condition remains delicate.
The normally loquacious socialist leader, who is struggling to speak as he breathes through a tracheal tube, took to Twitter with a passion back in April 2010, tweeting regularly and encouraging other leftist Latin American leaders to do likewise.
His @chavezcandanga account quickly drew a big mixed following of fans, critics and others just curious to see how his famously long speeches and fiery anti-U.S. invective would work within the social media network's 140-character limit.
But as he fought the cancer and underwent weeks of grueling chemotherapy and radiation therapy, he began to tweet less and less frequently, before stopping altogether on November 1.
Early on Monday morning, he made his reappearance.
"It was 4:30, 5 a.m. He got to his room and surprised everyone: rat-tat-tat, he sent three or four messages, and at that moment fireworks began to go off around the country," Vice President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised cabinet meeting.
During the day, Maduro added, the president's number of followers had shot up to well over four million.
"It's incredible, in just a few hours ... he's the second most-followed president in the world (after Barack Obama), and the first if we make the comparison by per capita," he said.
Obama has more than 27 million Twitter followers and is No. 5 most followed globally. Chavez is Twitter's No. 190 globally.
4TH MILLION FOLLOWER
Maduro said Chavez's four millionth follower was a 20-year-old single Venezuelan woman named Alemar Jimenez from the gritty San Juan neighborhood in downtown Caracas, near the military hospital where the president arrived earlier in the day.
"She's one of the golden generation of youth who support the fatherland and have been waiting with growing love for commander Hugo Chavez," Maduro said, before presenting a dazzled-looking Jimenez to the cameras and giving her a bunch of flowers.
"We were really emotional" she said, recounting how she was with her mother when they heard Chavez had returned. "I sent him a message on Twitter saying he must get better."
There are still big questions over the president's health. He could have come back to govern from behind the scenes, or he may be hoping to ease political tensions and pave the way for a transition to Maduro, his preferred successor.
Chavez has often ordered followers to fight back against opposition critics of his self-styled revolution by using social media, leading from the front himself on Twitter and referring to the Internet as a "battle trench."
As his ranks of followers grew, Chavez said he hired 200 assistants to help him respond to messages - which he said were a great way to receive first-hand the requests, demands, complaints and denunciations of citizens in the thousands.
During his re-election campaign last year, the government launched an SMS text message service that forwards his tweets to cellphones that lack Internet service, broadening their reach to the poorest corners of the South American country.
"He's a communication revolution!" Maduro said, later unbuttoning his shirt on TV to show he was wearing a T-shirt bearing Chavez's eyes emblazoned across his chest.
For the tens of thousands who signed up on Monday to follow Chavez on Twitter, it is unclear how much will be posted there in the weeks and months ahead. Venezuela's 29 million people are mostly wondering something similar.
(Additional reporting by Diego Ore; Editing by Todd Eastham)
