World Scene

CHINA

Direct vote ruled out for Hong Kong

HONG KONG — China’s top parliamentarians voted yesterday to rule out full direct elections for choosing Hong Kong’s leader and all its legislators in 2007 and 2008, one of its lawmakers said.

“There will be no universal suffrage for electing [Hong Kongs] third chief executive,” Tsang Hin-chi, a Hong Kong member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, or China’s parliament, told reporters in Beijing.

“There will be no universal suffrage for all legislators [for elections in 2008],” he added. Mr. Tsang’s comments were carried live by Hong Kong’s cable television.

AFGHANISTAN

Karzai invites Taliban to participate in vote

KANDAHAR — President Hamid Karzai made a surprise overture to the ousted Taliban yesterday, inviting its members to vote in September elections, and said his government was trying to negotiate peace with the insurgents.

A top Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, swiftly rejected the invitation and repeated a threat to disrupt the country’s first presidential and parliamentary elections and denied Taliban members were in talks with the government.

“They are Afghanistan’s people,” Mr. Karzai said of the Taliban. “They can go for registering their votes and take part in the elections and do what they want to do.”

JAPAN

Koizumi’s party gains in three by-elections

TOKYO — Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s ruling party snapped up all three parliamentary seats in by-elections yesterday in the first electoral test since a hostage crisis cast a shadow over Japan’s role in Iraq.

The voting for three vacancies in the 480-seat lower house of parliament was considered a preview of a major electoral battle looming in July in the legislature’s upper chamber.

The wins boost the Liberal Democratic Party’s number of lower house seats to 245 and its already comfortable coalition majority to 279.

ISRAEL

Palestinian reporters to get press passes

JERUSALEM — Israel’s highest court ruled yesterday that it was illegal for the government to routinely deny press credentials to all Palestinian reporters on the grounds that they were a potential security threat.

Ruling on a case brought by Reuters news agency and Al Jazeera television, the court found the Government Press Office had no right to deny press cards to Palestinian journalists once they had been given security clearance to enter Israel and work there.

The government stopped renewing press cards for Palestinian journalists at the end of 2001, saying they should be considered a security threat.

INDIA

Rebels kill at least 8 in election violence

PATNA — Rebels trying to disrupt India’s parliamentary elections killed at least eight persons and wounded at least 20 across India and Kashmir yesterday, a day before the next phase of the staggered voting.

Suspected Maoist rebels from the People’s War Group fatally shot three farmers and wounded another in a village in Bihar state, where Maoist rebels have threatened to attack anyone participating in the voting.

In another of several incidents, suspected Islamic militants hurled a grenade at an election rally in Jammu-Kashmir state, killing three civilians and wounding more than a dozen others. Mehbooba Mufti, president of the pro-India Peoples’ Democratic Party, escaped unhurt.