World News Highlights Nov 20

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's Supreme Court, packed with government-friendly judges since the imposition of emergency rule, dismissed the main challenges to President Pervez Musharraf's re-election last month.

Once the court clears Musharraf's Oct. 6 victory, he has vowed to quit as army chief and become a civilian president, although he remains under fire from the opposition and Western allies for setting back democracy in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

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DHAKA - Four days after super cyclone Sidr killed more than 3,000 people in Bangladesh, rescuers struggled to reach isolated areas along the country's devastated coast and give aid to millions of survivors.

"The tragedy unfolds as we walk through one after another devastated village," said relief worker Mohammad Selim in Bagerhat, one of the worst-hit areas. "Often it looks like we are in a valley of death."

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JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought wide Arab support for a U.S.-led peace conference by agreeing to release 441 Palestinian prisoners and reaffirming a pledge not to build new Jewish settlements.

Olmert held talks in Jerusalem with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a last-ditch bid to narrow differences a week ahead of the Annapolis, Maryland meeting.

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YANGON - Myanmar's detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was taken from her villa to a state guesthouse where she is believed to have met the ruling junta's liaison minister, opposition sources and witnesses said.

Witnesses said a government car with tinted windows left Suu Kyi's tightly guarded lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon and returned about one hour later.

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DONETSK, Ukraine - Rescue teams battled a tenacious fire in a Ukrainian colliery as they strove to locate 30 miners missing underground after a methane blast that killed at least 70 miners.

Distraught relatives awaiting news of missing miners more than 24 hours after the accident pushed their way into the office of the director to confront officials and demand information on rescue efforts and possible survivors.

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MOSCOW - Russia is reviewing whether to invite observers from the European watchdog OSCE to monitor next year's presidential election, the election chief said.

Russia is in dispute with the ODIHR, which runs the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's biggest election observation missions, since the body last week pulled out of observing a Dec. 2 parliamentary election, blaming obstruction by the Russian authorities.

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ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, under fire since imposing emergency rule, is due to visit Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, fuelling speculation he will reach out to Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he deposed and exiled.

"Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will arrive here on Tuesday on a visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

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TOKYO - Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is to meet the leader of Japan's main opposition party on Thursday, an opposition lawmaker said, but he said the pair were unlikely to revive an aborted attempt to forge a grand coalition.

Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa would hear a report on Fukuda's talks last week with U.S. President George W. Bush and on his visit to Singapore for an Asian leaders' gathering, as well as discuss with Fukuda the situation in parliament, Democratic Party executive Kenji Yamaoka told reporters.

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BEIRUT - France's foreign minister blamed unnamed parties for blocking a deal between rival Lebanese leaders to agree on a consensus nominee for president, two days before a parliamentary vote.

France has been pushing the anti-Syrian majority coalition and the opposition, led by pro-Syrian Hezbollah, towards picking a candidate from a list drafted by the patriarch of the Maronite Christian church to which Lebanese presidents must belong.

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PARIS - French transport workers voted to extend a six-day strike, but union leaders offered a glimmer of hope talks could resume soon to end a dispute that poses a challenge to President Nicolas Sarkozy's reform plans.

Early indications were that grass roots members of the rail unions were inclined to extend the strike for another 24 hours, which would ensure their industrial action overlaps with Tuesday's separate protest by public sector workers.

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BRUSSELS - European Union countries urged Serbia's breakaway Kosovo not to rush into a declaration of independence, with its backers insisting any such move should be coordinated internationally.

Former guerrilla Hashim Thaci, who is expected to become prime minister of the majority ethnic Albanian province after Saturday's election, said parliament would declare independence after a Dec. 10 deadline for international mediation efforts.

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SINGAPORE - The United States criticised the ASEAN group of Southeast Asian nations over its handling of military-ruled Myanmar as the group prepared to sign a charter that calls for respect of democracy and human rights.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that a free trade deal between Washington and the Association of South East Nations (ASEAN) was unlikely because of "the political situation in the region" and said ASEAN credibility had been called into question.

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PHNOM PENH - Rifle-toting Cambodian police arrested ex-Khmer Rouge president Khieu Samphan, the latest member of Pol Pot's inner circle to be detained by the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal.

The French-educated guerrilla leader was whisked from a Phnom Penh hospital by police convoy to the court compound to face Cambodian and international judges probing the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge reign of terror, one of the 20th century's darkest chapters.