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

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - One of hundreds of attacks reported in New Delhi each year, the gang rape and murder of a medical student caught Indian authorities and political parties flat-footed, slow to see that the assault on a private bus had come to symbolize an epidemic of crime against women.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last year, a rape was reported on average every 20 minutes in India. Just 26 percent of the cases resulted in convictions, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, which registered 24,206 rapes in 2011, up from 22,141 the previous year.

At first, authorities treated the assault on the medical student as one crime among many, and they were not prepared for the furious public reaction that led to running battles between protesters and police near the heart of government in New Delhi.

FAMILY ROLE MODEL

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHAME, ANGER IN SLUM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Chinese dissidents in rare visit to Nobel laureate's wife

BEIJING (Reuters) - A small group of Chinese dissidents forced their way past security guards last week to visit the detained wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and deliver a message of support, one of the dissidents said on Monday.

Liu, a veteran dissident involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests crushed by the Chinese army, won the prize in 2010. He was jailed the year before and is serving an 11-year sentence.

His wife Liu Xia is under house arrest. She is rarely allowed out and is almost never allowed to receive visitors.

Family friend and fellow dissident Hu Jia said he and a small group barged past guards at the apartment in Beijing's western suburbs on Friday - Liu Xiaobo's birthday - to be greeted by a tearful and surprised Liu Xia.

"I feel it is our right as Chinese citizens to go and see her," Hu told Reuters.

"I told her about the 134 Nobel laureates who have called on the government to release her and her husband. She was overjoyed to hear about this, but she also felt a sense of hopelessness that the government would pay no attention," he added.

"All I could say was that she should not give up hope."

Hu said the visit lasted just a few minutes, and that Liu Xia expressed a fear the government would take retribution against her for the meeting. He later uploaded a video of the visit to YouTube.

The Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama and author Toni Morrison, wrote to Communist Party chief Xi Jinping earlier this month, urging him to release detained Liu and his wife.

China says Liu is a criminal and should be treated as such, dismissing criticism of the case as unwarranted interference in its internal affairs. Liu's wife has not been convicted of any crime despite being under house arrest.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Pravin Char)

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Egypt's leader sees currency stabilizing "within days"

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's pound fell to a record low on Monday as the president signaled his government would allow it to depreciate slowly for several more days to stop a drain on foreign reserves that has driven the economy into crisis since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Hit by a new bout of political turmoil in the last month, the pound had weakened to a record low on Sunday at a new dollar auction brought in by the central bank. It fell further at a second auction on Monday, last trading at 6.37 to the dollar on the interbank market.

The drop means the central bank has allowed the pound to slide by almost 3 percent over the last two days after limiting its decline to only 6 percent since the uprising that removed Mubarak from power almost two years ago.

The pound's fall, which is certain to increase the price of imported staples such as tea and sugar, underlines the economic crisis facing President Mohamed Mursi as his administration tries to contain the political fall-out of his move to fast-track a contentious new constitution passed into law last week.

Egyptians panicked by street clashes between Mursi's Islamist backers and his more secular-minded opponents on the streets of Cairo and other cities have rushed to change their pounds into dollars in recent weeks, fearing it would be devalued further.

"The market will return to stability," Mursi told Arab journalists on Sunday evening, the state news agency MENA reported.

The pound's fall "does not worry or scare us, and within days matters will balance out," he said.

Having just sold their last dollar bills, dealers at one Cairo foreign exchange bureau did not bother changing their price board when the new low appeared on their trading screens.

"He took our last dollars," said one of the traders, pointing to a man walking out of the door.

Outside, another man told a friend his dollar hunt had failed. "They have no dollars. What can I do?" he said by mobile phone. "I went to many dealers and could not find dollars."

The fall has been driven mainly by ordinary citizens who have been trying to turn their savings into foreign currency, worried that the pound will weaken further because of the latest political turmoil.

The crisis wiped 10 percent off the value of Egyptian stocks when it erupted in late November. But the main index has mostly recovered since then, climbing in the two sessions since the introduction of the new foreign currency system.

Market participants attribute the rise to buying by Arab and international investors using the cheaper pound to bargain hunt.

FREE FLOATING POUND

The auctions are part of a shift announced on Saturday and designed to conserve foreign reserves, which the bank says are now at "critical" levels that cover just three months of the food, fuel and other goods Egypt imports.

Bankers have described the new system as a move towards establishing a free market value for the pound, which has been tightly controlled since a managed devaluation which ended in 2004.

The head of the Egyptian banking federation said the new system was an "important first step" towards a free float.

In remarks to MENA, Tarek Amer, who is also chairman of Egypt's largest bank, state-owned National Bank of Egypt, said the new system was a success on its first day and had "significantly reduced" demand for dollars.

The central bank has sold about $75 million at each of Sunday's and Monday's auctions.

The run on the pound prompted officials last week to impose controls on how much cash could be physically carried out of the country. Security men at one Cairo bank branch had to remove one customer angered by a $10,000 limit on how much currency he could withdraw, witnesses said.

The changes announced on Saturday include regular foreign currency auctions and also limit how much foreign currency companies can withdraw at a time.

The central bank had spent more than $20 billion - or more than half of its reserves - over the past two years to defend the currency. The reserves fell by a further $448 million in November to about $15 billion.

Prices of imports have already started to rise. Pyramid Oil Field, a firm that imports chemicals for use in water treatment and oil fields, had put up its prices by 10 to 15 percent last week, fearing a further weakening of the pound.

"This instability obliges you to increase the price, to have a safety factor," said Ashraf el-Gamal, president and managing director of the company, told Reuters. "From now on, the contracts will be of a very short validity."

To be on the safe side, he was projecting that the pound would weaken to stand at 9 against the euro, compared to a previous level of 8.

ECONOMY FRAGILE

Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said on Sunday that the economy was in "a very difficult and fragile" situation, adding that he expected talks with the International Monetary Fund on a $4.8 billion loan to resume in January.

Egypt won preliminary approval in November from the IMF for the loan, but delayed seeking final approval until January after it suspended a series of tax increases to allow more time to explain a heavily criticized package of economic austerity measures to the public.

Kandil's efforts to revive the economy have been hit by the latest turmoil, which scared off tourists who had begun to return. On the eve of the anti-Mubarak revolt, Egypt's tourism industry accounted for one in eight jobs.

Mursi hoped that the passage of a new constitution would stabilize Egypt's politics, giving him space to implement economic reforms and attract investment. The constitution, written by Mursi's Islamist allies, was approved in a popular referendum in December.

But it remains the focus of controversy, and the opposition is likely to seize upon austerity measures demanded under an IMF deal as a stick to beat the Muslim Brotherhood ahead of a parliamentary vote expected in early 2013.

Two-fifths of Egypt's 84 million population live around the poverty line and depend on subsidies that are straining the treasury.

Gamal of Pyramid Oil Field said he knew of at least three foreign companies that were hesitant to make large investments in the country because of the instability.

"They are feeling insecure because of everything that is happening," he said. "One is looking to invest billions."

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry; Writing by Tom Perry and Patrick Werr; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Assad's forces battle to retake Damascus suburb

AMMAN (Reuters) - Elite Syrian government troops backed by tanks battled on Monday to recapture a strategic Damascus suburb from rebels who have advanced within striking distance of the center of Syria's capital.

Five people, including a child, died from army rocket fire that hit the Daraya suburb during the fighting, opposition activists said. Daraya is part of a semi-circle of Sunni Muslim suburbs south of the capital that have been at the forefront of the 21-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.

"This is the biggest attack on Daraya in two months. An armored column is trying to advance but it is being held (back) by the Free Syrian Army," said Abu Kinan, an opposition activist in the area, referring to a rebel group.

Clashes were also reported near the airport in Aleppo, Syria's largest city, which is in the north. Insurgents have made that airport a target in the hope of limiting government access to Aleppo, which is largely under rebel control.

Rebels have taken much of the north and east of Syria over the past six months, but government forces still hold most of the densely populated southwest around the capital, the main north-south highway and the Mediterranean coast.

Government forces scored a victory on Saturday, pushing rebels out of Deir Baalbeh, a district in Homs, an important central city that straddles the highway linking Damascus with the north and the Mediterranean.

Some opposition activists have said scores or even hundreds of people were executed in Deir Baalbeh by troops that seized it after several days of fighting. However, reports of killings there on a large scale could not be verified.

More than 45,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the 21-month war, the longest and deadliest of the revolts that began throughout the Arab world two years ago. Mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are fighting to topple Assad, a member of the Alawite minority sect whose family has ruled Syria since his father seized power 42 years ago in a coup.

The opposition refuses to hold peace talks unless Assad relinquishes power, and military successes over the last six months have reinforced its belief it can drive him out by force.

However, government troops still heavily outgun the fighters and maintain air bases scattered across the country.

The Damascus suburbs have become one of the major fronts of the war, with the rebels hoping to finally bring their uprising to the capital, heart of Assad's power.

Activist Abu Kinan said that tens of thousands of civilians had fled Daraya during weeks of government assault on the suburb, but that 5,000 remained, along with hundreds of rebels. Daraya is located near the main southern highway connecting Damascus to the Jordanian border 85 km (50 miles) to the south.

Activists said Republican Guard forces are trying to push back rebels who have been slowly advancing from the outskirts of Damascus to within striking distance of government targets and central districts inhabited by Assad's Alawite minority sect.

Assad's forces have mostly relied on aerial and artillery bombardment, rather than infantry. Rebels have been able take outlying towns and have clashed with government troops near Damascus International Airport, halting flights by foreign airlines.

Another activist in Damascus with links to rebels, who did not want to be named, said Daraya has been a firing position for rebels using mortars and homemade rockets. From it, they have been able to hit a huge presidential complex located on a hilltop overlooking Damascus and target pro-Assad shabbiha militia in an Alawite enclave nearby known as Mezze 86.

"So far they have missed the palace but they are getting better. I think the regime has realized that it no longer can afford to have such a threat so close by, but it has failed to overrun Daraya before," he said.

"HELL OR THE POLITICAL PROCESS"

The opposition is backed by most Western and Arab states, while Assad has enjoyed the diplomatic protection of Moscow, which sells arms to his government and maintains a naval base in one of his ports.

Western countries have been searching for signs that Moscow is lifting its protection of Assad, hoping that would bring him down much as Russia's withdrawal of support heralded the fall of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic 12 years ago.

Moscow said on Saturday that it has no power to make Assad leave office, and accused the rebels of prolonging the bloodshed by refusing to negotiate with him.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has called on outside powers to push all sides to talk, arguing that Syria faces a choice of "hell or the political process".

Brahimi is touting a peace plan agreed to in principle by international powers six months ago, but the plan does not explicitly call for Assad to be excluded from power, which the opposition regards as a precondition to any talks.

The opposition-linked Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that rebels clashed with government troops near Aleppo's international airport. Rami Abdelrahman, the British-based Observatory's director, told Reuters by phone that fighting flared on Sunday night and continued into Monday morning.

He said no flights were departing or arriving from the airport. Syria's state airline canceled at least one flight there over the weekend.

Nevertheless, the government's seizure of Deir Baalbeh in Homs is a reminder that its forces are still capable of recapturing territory from the lightly armed rebels. Syria's state news agency SANA said government forces seized a large cache of weapons and ammunition after capturing the district.

(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Oliver Holmes and Mark Heinrich)

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Bombs kill 16 across Iraq as sectarian strife grows

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Explosions killed at least 16 people and wounded 76 across Iraq on Monday, police said, underlining sectarian and ethnic divisions that threaten to further destabilize the country a year after U.S. troops left.

Tensions between Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year. Militants strike almost daily and have staged at least one big attack a month.

The latest violence followed more than a week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community.

No group claimed responsibility for any of Monday's attacks, which targeted government officials, police patrols and members of both the Sunni and Shi'ite sects.

Seven people from the same Sunni family were killed by a bomb planted near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad.

In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla, also in the south, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing two other people, police said.

"We heard the sound of a big explosion and the windows of our office shattered. We immediately lay on the ground," said 28-year-old Mohammed Ahmed, who works at a hospital near the site of the explosion.

"After a few minutes I stood up and went to the windows to see what happened. I saw flames and people lying on the ground."

In the capital Baghdad, five people were killed by a parked car bomb targeting pilgrims before a Shi'ite religious rite this week, police and hospital sources said.

Although violence is far lower than during the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, about 2,000 people have been killed in Iraq this year following the withdrawal last December of U.S. troops, who led an invasion in 2003 to overthrow Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

SUNNIS PROTEST

Monday's violence also included a series of blasts that killed three people in Iraq's disputed territories, over which both the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region claim jurisdiction.

Two of those deaths were in the oil-producing, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, where a bomb exploded as a police team tried to defuse it.

Baghdad and Kurdistan are locked in a feud over land and oil rights and recently deployed their respective armies to the swathe of territory along their contested internal boundary, where they are currently facing off against one other.

Efforts to ease the standoff stalled when President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence, suffered a stroke and was flown abroad for medical care in December.

Maliki then detained the bodyguards of his Sunni finance minister, which ignited anti-government protests in the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold on the border with Syria.

A lecturer in law at Baghdad University said the protests could help create the conditions for militant Islamist groups like al Qaeda to thrive.

"Raising tension in Anbar and other provinces with mainly Sunni populations is definitely playing into the hands of al Qaeda and other insurgent groups," Ahmed Younis said.

More than 1,000 people protested in the city of Samarra on Monday and rallies continued in Ramadi, centre of the protests, and in Mosul, where about 500 people took to the streets.

Protesters are demanding an end to what they see as the marginalization of Sunnis, who dominated the country until the U.S.-led invasion. They want Maliki to abolish anti-terrorism laws they say are used to persecute them.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, himself a Sunni, was forced to flee a protest in Ramadi when demonstrators pelted him with stones and bottles.

The civil war in neighboring Syria, where majority Sunnis are fighting to topple a ruler backed by Shi'ite Iran, is also whipping up sectarian sentiment in Iraq.

"The toppling of President Bashar al-Assad and empowerment of Sunnis (in Syria) will definitely encourage al Qaeda to regain ground," Younis said.

(Reporting by Ali al-Rubaie in Hilla, Mustafa Mahmoud and Omar Mohammed in Kirkuk, Ali Mohammed in Baquba and Ahmed Rasheed and Aseel Kami in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Pakistan militants kill 41 in mass execution, attack on Shi'ites

PESHWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani militants, who have escalated attacks in recent weeks, killed at least 41 people in two separate incidents, officials said on Sunday, challenging assertions that military offensives have broken the back of hardline Islamist groups.

The United States has long pressured nuclear-armed ally Pakistan to crack down harder on both homegrown militants groups such as the Taliban and others which are based on its soil and attack Western forces in Afghanistan.

In the north, 21 men working for a government-backed paramilitary force were executed overnight after they were kidnapped last week, a provincial official said.

Twenty Shi'ite pilgrims died and 24 were wounded, meanwhile, when a car bomb targeted their bus convoy as it headed toward the Iranian border in the southwest, a doctor said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has noted more than 320 Shias killed this year in Pakistan and said attacks were on the rise. It said the government's failure to catch or prosecute attackers suggested it was "indifferent" to the killings.

Pakistan, seen as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize the region before NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, denies allegations that it supports militant groups like the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network.

Afghan officials say Pakistan seems more genuine than ever about promoting peace in Afghanistan.

At home, it faces a variety of highly lethal militant groups that carry out suicide bombings, attack police and military facilities and launch sectarian attacks like the one on the bus in the southwest.

Witnesses said a blast targeted their three buses as they were overtaking a car about 60 km (35 miles) west of Quetta, capital of sparsely populated Baluchistan province.

"The bus next to us caught on fire immediately," said pilgrim Hussein Ali, 60. "We tried to save our companions, but were driven back by the intensity of the heat."

Twenty people had been killed and 24 wounded, said an official at Mastung district hospital.

CONCERN OVER EXTREMIST SUNNI GROUPS

International attention has focused on al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

But Pakistani intelligence officials say extremist Sunni groups, lead by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) are emerging as a major destabilizing force in a campaign designed to topple the government.

Their strategy now, the officials say, is to carry out attacks on Shi'ites to create the kind of sectarian tensions that pushed countries like Iraq to the brink of civil war.

As elections scheduled for next year approach, Pakistanis will be asking what sort of progress their leaders have made in the fight against militancy and a host of other issues, such as poverty, official corruption and chronic power cuts.

Pakistan's Taliban have carried out a series of recent bold attacks, as military officials point to what they say is a power struggle in the group's leadership revolving around whether it should ease attacks on the Pakistani state and join groups fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban denies a rift exists among its leaders.

In the attack in the northwest, officials said they had found the bodies of 21 men kidnapped from their checkpoints outside the provincial capital of Peshawar on Thursday. The men were executed one by one.

"They were tied up and blindfolded," Naveed Anwar, a senior administration official, said by telephone.

"They were lined up and shot in the head," said Habibullah Arif, another local official, also by telephone.

One man was shot and seriously wounded but survived, the officials said. He was in critical condition and being treated at a local hospital. Another had escaped before the shootings.

Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed responsibility for the attacks.

"We killed all the kidnapped men after a council of senior clerics gave a verdict for their execution. We didn't make any demand for their release because we don't spare any prisoners who are caught during fighting," he said.

The powerful military has clawed back territory from the Taliban, but the kidnap and executions underline the insurgents' ability to mount high-profile, deadly attacks in major cities.

This month, suicide bombers attacked Peshawar's airport on December 15 and a bomb killed a senior Pashtun nationalist politician and eight other people at a rally on December 22.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN and Gul Yousufzai in QUETTA; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Michael Georgy and Ron Popeski)

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Sunni protesters attack Iraq official's convoy, guards wound two

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Bodyguards for Iraq's deputy prime minister wounded two people when they fired warning shots at Sunni protesters who pelted his convoy with bottles and stones on Sunday, witnesses said.

The incident took place in the city of Ramadi in the western province of Anbar, to where Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq had travelled to address people in an attempt to defuse sectarian tensions.

Thousands of Iraqi Sunnis have taken to the streets and blocked a main highway over the past week in protest against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom they accuse of discriminating against them and being under the sway of non-Arab neighbor Iran.

"Leave! Leave!" the protesters shouted at Mutlaq, himself a Sunni.

"It's only now Mutlaq comes to attend the protest and after seven days. He came to undermine the protest," Saeed al-Lafi, a spokesman for the protesters, told Reuters.

Mutlaq's guards opened fire to disperse the crowd after they threw objects at his convoy. Two people were wounded, the witness said.

In a statement following the incident, Mutlaq said some "rogue elements" at the protest had tried to kill him.

"Upon the deputy prime minister's arrival, the protesters greeted him with great warmth...but some rogue elements which seek to divert the protesters from their legitimate demands carried out a cowardly assassination attempt against Doctor Mutlaq," it read.

Protesters are demanding an end to marginalization of Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated the country until the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.

They want Maliki to abolish anti-terrorism laws they say are used to persecute them.

Echoing slogans used in popular revolts that brought down leaders in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Yemen, protesters have also been calling on Maliki to step down.

"Is this the way to deal with peaceful protesters? To shoot them? This is really outrageous," said protester Ghazwan al-Fahdawi, displaying empty bullet casings from shots he said had been fired by Mutlaq's guards.

In the northern city of Mosul, the provincial council called a three-day strike to press Baghdad to release women prisoners and stop targeting Sunni politicians.

Protests flared last week in Anbar province after troops loyal to Maliki detained bodyguards of his finance minister, a Sunni.

That came just hours after Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence on the country's tumultuous politics, was flown abroad for medical care.

The Arab League described recent developments as "worrying" and called for dialogue in a statement released on Friday.

A year after U.S. troops left, sectarian friction, as well as tension over land and oil between Arabs and ethnic Kurds, threaten renewed unrest and are hampering efforts to repair the damage of years of violence and exploit Iraq's energy riches.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Sufyan al-Mashhadani in Mosul and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Obama: U.S. has good leads on who carried out Benghazi attacks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has some "very good leads" about who carried out the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans including the U.S. ambassador in September, President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

Obama told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the United States would carry out all of the recommendations put forward in an independent review of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed.

"We're not going to pretend that this was not a problem. This was a huge problem. And we're going to implement every single recommendation that's been put forward," Obama said in the interview, referring to security issues identified in the review.

"With respect to who carried it out, that's an ongoing investigation. The FBI has sent individuals to Libya repeatedly. We have some very good leads, but this is not something that I'm going to be at liberty to talk about right now," he said.

The interview was conducted on Saturday.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Will Dunham)

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

CAIRO (Reuters) - The U.N.-Arab League negotiator for Syria called on Sunday for outside help to get the warring parties talking to each other, without which he said the country's 21-month civil war would not end.

Speaking in Egypt after visiting Moscow and Damascus in the past week, Lakhdar Brahimi said the situation in Syria had deteriorated sharply, but a solution was still possible under the terms of a peace plan agreed in Geneva in June.

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

Brahimi has struggled to bridge the mutual hostility between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his foes, and efforts to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict, which has claimed at least 44,000 lives, have failed to make headway.

Addressing reporters at the Cairo headquarters of the Arab League, Brahimi said the Syrian state would collapse without a negotiated solution and turn into "hell".

The peace plan has stalled on demands by the opposition that Assad be excluded from any transitional government, and Brahimi now cuts an unpopular figure among the rebels, who have been emboldened by their advances on the ground.

"I say that the solution must be this year: 2013, and, God willing, before the second anniversary of this crisis," he said.

The Geneva agreement, which leaves Assad's fate unclear but includes a ceasefire and steps towards elections, was negotiated by Brahimi's predecessor Kofi Annan, who later quit in frustration at divisions in the U.N. Security Council.

"A solution is still possible but is getting more complicated every day," said Brahimi. "We have a proposal, and I believe this proposal is adopted by the international community."

A day after Egyptian leader Mohamed Mursi said Assad's office had no place in Syria's future, Brahimi met Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, who dismissed the possibility of a military resolution, state media reported.

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

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

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry Writing by Maria Golovnina; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Body of India rape victim cremated in New Delhi

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

Scuffles broke out in central Delhi between police and protesters who say the government is doing too little to protect women. But the 2,000-strong rally was confined to a single area, unlike last week when protests raged up throughout the capital.

Riot police manned barricades along streets leading to India Gate war memorial - a focal point for demonstrators - and, at another gathering point - the centuries-old Jantar Mantar - protesters held banners reading "We want justice!" and "Capital punishment".

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

The unidentified 23-year-old victim of the December 16 gang rape died of her injuries on Saturday, prompting promises of action from a government that has struggled to respond to public outrage.

The medical student had suffered brain injuries and massive internal injuries in the attack and died in hospital in Singapore where she had been taken for treatment.

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

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

Six suspects were charged with murder after her death and face the death penalty if convicted.

In Kolkata, one of India's four biggest cities, police said a man reported that his mother had been gang-raped and killed by a group of six men in a small town near the city on Saturday.

She was killed on her way home with her husband, a senior official said, and the attackers had thrown acid at the husband, raped and killed her, and dumped her body in a roadside pond.

Police declined to give any further details. One officer told Reuters no criminal investigation had yet been launched.

"MISOGYNY"

The leader of India's ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, was seen arriving at the airport when the plane carrying the woman's body from Singapore landed and Prime Minister Mannmohan Singh's convoy was also there.

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

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

The outcry over the attack caught the government off guard. It took a week for the prime minister to make a statement, infuriating many protesters. Last weekend they fought pitched battles with police.

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

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

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon added his voice to those demanding change, calling for "further steps and reforms to deter such crimes and bring perpetrators to justice".

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

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

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

The Indian Express said it was more complicated than realizing that the police force was understaffed and underpaid.

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

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin and Diksha Madhokin New Delhi and Sujoy Dhar in Kolkata; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Arab officials visit cash-strapped Palestinian territory

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Top Arab officials paid a rare visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday to discuss a Palestinian financial crisis that President Mahmoud Abbas hopes will be eased by Arab donations.

Arab League Chief Nabil Elaraby and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr congratulated the Palestinians on a successful United Nations status upgrade last month, but stopped short of promising the badly-needed funds.

"Palestine is in need of material and political support," Elaraby told a news conference in the Palestinians' de facto capital of Ramallah.

"Arab countries agreed at their Baghdad summit (in March) for an Arab safety net of $100 million dollars each month, but unfortunately none of this has been achieved yet," he said.

Palestinian were cheered by a strong majority in the United Nations recognizing them as an "observer state" on November 29 but have struggled to get Arab support to make up $100 million in shortfalls left by Israeli sanctions following the U.N. move.

Elaraby is the first Arab League Chief to visit Ramallah, but he and other prominent Arab and Islamic leaders, including the Egyptian prime minister, met Abbas's Palestinian Hamas rivals in Gaza during their brief war with Israel last month.

QATARI LEADER

Hamas, which split from the West Bank after it seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, also won a diplomatic coup by receiving Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state of Qatar, who pledged $400 million in aid for the impoverished territory in October.

The emir postponed a visit to Ramallah he had announced this month, disappointing West Bank officials who had hoped he would arrive bearing gifts of cash.

The Gaza visits broke years of diplomatic quarantine for the Islamist Hamas group, which refuses to recognize Israel or relinquish its arms, and increased the isolation of the dovish, Western-backed Ramallah government.

West Bank officials have watched with worry as uprisings in the Arab world divert attention from their diplomatic strategy, which has failed to achieve an independent Palestinian state.

Hamas militants, by contrast, have been heartened as fellow-Islamists rise to power in Egypt and elsewhere.

Abbas has accused Israel of "piracy" after it withheld customs revenues it collects on the Palestinians' behalf, citing months of utilities bills Ramallah owes Israeli companies.

The financial crisis has forced the Palestinian Authority to delay salary payments to West Bank employees, who have gone on strike in protest. Abbas has responded by saying he might give up power and compel Israel to take on the Palestinians' affairs.

"Sit in the chair here instead of me, take the keys, and you will be responsible for the Palestinian Authority," Abbas warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an interview with the Israeli Haaretz newspaper this week.

"I won't do anything as long as there are diplomatic negotiations," he said. "But if the stalemate continues...what's left for us to do?"

(Reporting By Noah Browning and Ali Sawafta; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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Blast in Pakistan's Karachi kills six on bus, 48 hurt

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - A bomb went off on a bus in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Saturday killing six people and wounding 48, police and a hospital official said.

Pakistan's commercial capital and biggest city has seen numerous militant attacks over the past 10 years and is also plagued by violence between rival ethnic-based factions.

The bus sustained serious damage in the explosion and a subsequent fire. While police said the bomb had been planted on the bus, provincial official Sharfud Din Memon said it was left on a motor-bike and went off as the bus passed.

Eight of the wounded were in critical condition, said Seemi Jamali, a doctor at Jinnah Hospital.

(Writing By Katharine Houreld; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Death of India rape victim stirs anger, promises of action

NEW DELHI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A woman whose gang rape provoked protests and rare national debate about violence against women in India died from her injuries on Saturday, prompting promises of action from a government that has struggled to respond to public outrage.

The unidentified 23-year-old medical student suffered a brain injury and massive internal damage in the December 16 attack and died in hospital in Singapore where she had been taken for treatment.

Protesters rallied peacefully in the capital New Delhi and other cities across the country to keep the pressure on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government to get tougher on crimes against women. That was in contrast to the pitched battles protesters fought with police last weekend.

The six suspects held in connection with the attack on the student on a New Delhi bus were charged with murder following her death, police said. The maximum penalty for murder is death.

Authorities, worried about the reaction to the news of her death, deployed thousands of policemen, closed 10 metro stations and banned vehicles from some main roads in the heart of New Delhi, where demonstrators have converged since the attack to demand improved women's rights.

Despite efforts to cordon off the city centre, more than 1,000 people gathered at two locations. Some protesters shouted for justice, others for the death penalty for the rapists.

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

Political leaders vowed steps to correct "shameful social attitudes" towards women in the world's biggest democracy.

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

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

The woman, beaten, raped and thrown out of a moving bus, had been flown to Singapore in a critical condition by the Indian government on Thursday.

"She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome," Kelvin Loh, chief executive officer of the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore said in a statement announcing her death from multiple organ failure.

The Indian government has chartered an aircraft to fly the student's body back to India, along with members of her family, T.C.A. Raghavan, the Indian high commissioner to Singapore, told reporters.

The body was taken from the hospital to a Hindu undertaker in Singapore and hours later, lying in a gold an yellow coffin selected by Indian diplomats, the body was driven in a hearse to the airport.

"DETERMINATION"

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in the northern Indian city of Lucknow. In Hyderabad, in southern India, a group of women marched to demand severe punishment for the rapists. Protests were also held in the cities of Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai.

"For some reason, and I don't really know why, she got through to us," well-known columnist Nilanjana Roy wrote in a blog on Saturday.

"Our words shriveled in the face of what she'd been subjected to by the six men travelling on that bus, who spent an hour torturing and raping her, savagely beating up her male friend."

Sonia Gandhi, the powerful leader of the ruling Congress party, directly addressed the protesters in a rare broadcast on state television, saying that as a mother and a woman she understood their grievances.

"Your voice has been heard," Gandhi said. "It deepens our determination to battle the pervasive and the shameful social attitudes that allow men to rape and molest women with such impunity."

The victim and her male friend were returning home from the cinema, media reports say, six men on their bus beat them with metal rods and repeatedly raped the woman. Media said a rod was used in the rape, causing internal injuries. Both were thrown from the bus. The male friend survived.

The six suspects have all been arrested and are in custody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Additional reporting by Devidutta Tripathy, Satarupa Bhattacharjya, Diksha Madhok, Shashank Chouhan and Suchitra Mohanty in Delhi, Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow, Sujoy Dhar in Kolkata, Anupama Chandrasekaran in Chennai, Eveline Danubrata, Saeed Azhar, Edgar Su and Sanjeev Miglani in Singapore; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Robert Birsel)

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Egypt lets building material cross its border into Gaza

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) - Islamist-led Egypt allowed building materials into Gaza via the Rafah crossing on Saturday for the first time since Hamas seized control of the Palestinian enclave in 2007, an Egyptian border official said.

It was part of a shipment of building materials donated by the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, which has pledged $400 million to finance reconstruction in Gaza. The Islamist group Hamas has run Gaza since driving out its rivals in the Palestinian Authority.

Israel tightened a blockade on the Gaza Strip after Hamas, which refuses to recognize the Jewish state, took power there.

Hamas has been hoping that the rise to power in Egypt of a fellow-Islamist government sympathetic to its cause will lead to a full opening of Rafah to commercial goods. Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi sent his prime minister to Gaza last month to show solidarity during a brief war between Hamas and Israel.

The Rafah border with Egypt is the only Gaza crossing not controlled by Israel, which withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005. Cairo has restricted the use of Rafah crossing to travelers and medical relief, giving rise to extensive smuggling into Gaza through tunnels under the border.

The border official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the Egyptian authorities had agreed to allow the Qatari-donated material into Gaza, the shipment did not mark the start of the full opening of the crossing sought by Hamas.

An official in Gaza's Hamas government said it was a positive step. "We hope that Egypt will open this crossing permanently for goods so our people can meet their needs," said Ehab al-Ghsain, head of the Hamas government media office.

Palestinians said it was the first time anything other than people and medical supplies had been allowed in since 2006. Six truck loads of building material had crossed on Saturday, with more expected later in the day, the Egyptian official said.

The government of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, who was removed from power by a popular uprising nearly two years ago, looked on Hamas with suspicion bordering on outright hostility.

Leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood, which propelled Mursi to the presidency in a June election, had said they backed the idea of opening Rafah to trade. But Mursi has taken no public steps in that direction since taking office.

Cairo has long feared that opening Rafah fully might prompt Israel to close permanently the other crossings with Gaza, which it captured from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war.

Ghsain said: "Rafah had been closed for goods for so many years and we always hoped such a policy would change, without exempting the Israeli occupation from their responsibilities. Israel must end the closure and reopen all crossings with Gaza."

(Reporting by Yousri Mohamed in Ismailia and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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Only political process can save Syria from "hell": envoy

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Syria faces "hell" if no deal is struck to end 21 months of bloodshed, an international mediator said on Saturday, but his talks in Russia brought no sign of a breakthrough after a week of intense diplomacy.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov both said there was still a chance for a negotiated solution to the conflict, which has killed more than 44,000 people and set world powers against one another.

But Lavrov repeated Russia's stance that President Bashar al-Assad's removal cannot be a precondition for a political solution, saying that such demands were "wrong" and that the opposition's refusal to talk to the government was a "dead end".

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

Lavrov issued a similar exhortation in a joint appearance at an ornate mansion where he meets foreign dignitaries, saying: "The chance for a political settlement remains and it is our obligation to make maximal use of that chance."

But no major new initiatives were announced and Lavrov, whose country has vetoed three United Nations Security Council resolutions meant to put pressure on Assad, gave no indication it would back down from that stance.

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

Russia has tried to distance itself from Assad for months and seems to have stepped up its calls for a peaceful resolution as the rebels have gained ground against government forces in the conflict, which began with peaceful protests in March 2011 but which has descended into a civil war.

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

Brahimi is trying to build on a plan agreed in Geneva in June by the United States, Russia and other powers that called for a transitional government but left Assad's role unclear. The United States said the agreement sent a clear signal that Assad should step down, but Russia said it did nothing of the kind.

"The core of that political process ... is and must be the Geneva agreement," said Brahimi, who took over as the U.N.-Arab League envoy after Kofi Annan quit in frustration at divisions among world powers, chiefly the United States and Russia, and the failure of the Geneva accord to bring a resolution closer.

"There may be one or two little adjustments to make here and there, but it is a reasonable basis for a political process that will help the Syrian people," he said, without elaborating.

TALKING ABOUT TALKS

Brahimi said a plan to resolve the conflict could eventually go to the U.N. Security Council for backing, but only if there was confidence it would be effective.

"What we need to have is a resolution that can work, and I think it is possible to get to that stage if we continue to talk," he said.

The Algerian envoy, who met Assad and others on a five-day trip to Syria this week, is to meet senior U.S. and Russian diplomats together in the coming weeks, after two such meetings this month that produced no signs of a breakthrough.

In Damascus on Thursday, Brahimi called for a transitional government to rule until elections in Syria and said only substantial change would meet demands of ordinary Syrians, but did not specify who could be part of such a body.

A spokesman for the opposition National Coalition said on Friday the coalition "will not negotiate with the Assad regime", and its leader rebuffed Russia's first invitation for talks.

The leader, Moaz Alkhatib, said he would not travel to Moscow and issued conditions for talks, demanding that Lavrov apologies for Russia's support for Assad and that Moscow issue a clear call for him to step down.

Lavrov testily rejected those demands, saying the opposition "should think not of their ambitions but about the Syrian people". Nevertheless, he reiterated Russia's readiness to hold the meeting somewhere outside its territory.

"If they think that Russia can play any kind of role in this drama, then they should meet with us," Lavrov said.

Syria has been a major buyer of Russian arms and hosts a modest naval maintenance facility on the Mediterranean that is Russia's only military base outside the former Soviet Union.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russian vetoes and opposition to U.N. sanctions against Syria are driven by the principle of non-interference in sovereign states. He has accused Washington of using human rights concerns to justify efforts to impose its will around the world.

Putin has emphasized that Moscow will not allow a repeat in Syria of last year's events in Libya, where NATO intervention, authorized by the U.N. Security Council after Russia abstained from a vote, helped rebels topple Muammar Gaddafi.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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Netanyahu set to win Israel election but rightists gain: polls

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party is set to win a parliamentary election on January 22 although the popularity of a far-right party opposed to Palestinian statehood is growing, polls showed on Friday.

Two out of three surveys showed the right-wing Likud losing voters to political newcomer Naftali Bennett's religious party Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home)and to a fractured center-left bloc.

All still predicted a strong right-wing coalition emerging in the 120-seat parliament, which would assure Netanyahu another term.

The daily Yedioth Ahronoth published a poll with Likud winning 33 seats, four less than a month ago. A poll in the Jerusalem Post showed Likud fell to 34, down from 39 just two weeks ago. A survey by Maariv said Likud held ground at 37.

Without a majority in parliament, Likud would have to join forces with other parties to form a government. Netanyahu could choose Bennett and ultra-Orthodox religious parties or team up with members of the center-left bloc.

The left-leaning Labor party remained in second place in all the polls, winning 17 or 18 seats.

Bennett's party platform rejects a two-state solution with the Palestinians and is staunchly in favor of settlement building in the occupied West Bank - an issue which has stalled peace talks.

All the polls show him on an upward trend, winning between 12 and 14 seats.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Pakistan Taliban chief says group will negotiate, but not disarm

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - The head of Pakistan's Taliban said his militia is willing to negotiate with the government but not disarm, a message delivered in a video given to Reuters on Friday.

The release of the 40-minute video follows three high-profile Taliban attacks in the northern city of Peshawar this month: an attack by multiple suicide bombers on the airport, the killing of a senior politician and eight others in a bombing and the kidnap of 22 paramilitary forces on Thursday.

The attacks underline the Taliban's ability to strike high-profile, well-protected targets even as the amount of territory it controls has shrunk and its leaders are picked off by U.S. drones.

"We believe in dialogue but it should not be frivolous," Hakimullah Mehsud said. "Asking us to lay down arms is a joke."

In the video, Mehsud sits cradling a rifle next to his deputy, Wali ur-Rehman. Military officials say there has been a split between the two men but Mehsud said that was propaganda.

"Wali ur-Rehman is sitting with me here and we will be together until death," said Mehsud, pointing at his companion.

Pakistani officials did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment.

The Taliban said in a letter released Thursday that they wanted Pakistan to rewrite its laws and constitution to conform with Islamic law, break its alliance with the United States and stop interfering in the war in Afghanistan and focus on India instead.

Mehsud referred to the killing of the senior politician in his speech and said the political party, the largely Pashtun Awami National Party, would continue to be a target along with other politicians.

"We are against the democratic system because it is un-Islamic," Mehsud said. "Our war isn't against any party. It is against the non-Islamic system and anyone who supports it."

Pakistan is due to hold elections next spring. The current government, which came to power five years ago, struck an uneasy deal with the Taliban in 2009 that allowed the militia to control Swat valley, less than 100 km (60 miles) from the capital, Islamabad.

A few months later, the military launched an operation that pushed the militants back. The U.S. military also intensified its use of drone strikes.

Now the Taliban control far less territory and the frequency and deadliness of their bombings has declined dramatically.

The Taliban's key stronghold is in North Waziristan, one of the tribal areas along the Afghan border and the site of most of the hundreds of drone strikes by the United States.

Mehsud said in his interview that although he was open to dialogue, the Pakistani government was to blame for the violence because it broke previous, unspecified deals.

"In the past, it is the Pakistani government that broke peace agreements," he said. "A slave of the U.S. can't make independent agreements; it breaks agreements according to U.S. dictat."

Mehsud said that the Pakistan Taliban would follow the lead of the Afghan Taliban when it came to forming policy after most NATO troops withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.

"We are Afghan Taliban and Afghan Taliban are us," he said. "We are with them and al Qaida. We are even willing to get our heads cut off for al Qaida."

(Writing By Katharine Houreld; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Putin signs ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Friday that bans Americans from adopting Russian children and imposes other sanctions in retaliation for a new U.S. human rights law that he says is poisoning relations.

The law, which has ignited outrage among Russian liberals and child rights' advocates, takes effect on January 1. Washington has called the law misguided and said it ties the fate of children to "unrelated political considerations."

It is likely to deepen a chill in U.S.-Russian relations and deal a blow to Putin's image abroad.

Fifty-two children whose adoptions by American parents were underway will remain in Russia, Interfax news agency cited Russia's child rights commissioner, Pavel Astakhov, as saying.

The law, whose text was issued by the Kremlin, will also outlaw some non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. funding and impose a visa ban and asset freeze on Americans accused of violating the rights of Russians abroad.

Pro-Kremlin lawmakers initially drafted the bill to mirror the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which bars entry to Russians accused of involvement in the death in custody of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other alleged rights abuses.

The restrictions on adoptions and non-profit groups were added to the legislation later, going beyond a tit-for-tat move and escalating a dispute with Washington at a time when ties are also strained by issues such as the Syrian crisis.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Magnitsky Act had "seriously undermined" the "reset" -- the moniker for the effort U.S. President Barack Obama launched early in his first term to improve relations between the former Cold War foes.

Putin has backed the hawkish response with a mix of public appeals to patriotism, saying Russia should care for its own children, and belligerent denunciations of what he says is the U.S. desire to impose its will on the world.

Seeking to dampen criticism of the move, Putin also signed a decree ordering an improvement in care for orphans.

Critics of the Russian legislation say Putin has held the welfare of children trapped in an crowded and troubled orphanage system hostage to political maneuvering.

"He signed it after all! He signed one of the most shameful laws in Russia history," a blogger named Yuri Pronko wrote on the popular Russian site LiveJournal.

BLOW TO RUSSIA'S IMAGE

The acquittal on Friday of the only person being tried over Magnitsky's death will fuel accusations by Kremlin critics that the Russian authorities have no intention of seeking justice in a case that has blackened Russia's image.

A Russian court on acquitted Dmitry Kratov, a former deputy head a jail where Magnitsky was held before his death in 2009 after nearly a year in pre-trial detention, after prosecutors themselves dropped charges against him.

Lawyers for Magnitsky's family said they will appeal and called for further investigation.

Magnitsky's colleagues say he is the victim of retribution from the same police investigators he had accused of stealing $230 million from the state through fraudulent tax refunds -- the very same crimes with which he was charged.

The case against Magnitsky was closed after his death but then was reopened again in August 2011.

In an unprecedented move, Russia is trying Magnitsky posthumously for fraud, despite protests from his family and the lawyers that it is unconstitutional to try a dead man. A preliminary hearing is scheduled next month.

Magnitsky's death triggered an international outcry and Kremlin critics said it underscored the dangers faced by Russians who challenge the authorities. The Kremlin's own human rights council said Magnitsky was probably beaten to death.

The adoption ban may further tarnish Putin's international standing at a time when the former KGB officer is under scrutiny over what critics say is a crackdown on dissent since he returned to the Kremlin for a six-year third term in May.

"The law will lead to a sharp drop in the reputation of the Kremlin and of Putin personally abroad, and signal a new phase in relations between the United States and Russia," said Lilia Shevtsova, an expert on Putin with the Carnegie Moscow Centre.

"It is only the first harbinger of a chill."

(Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk and Maria Tsvetkova; Editing By Steve Gutterman, Andrew Osborn and Roger Atwood)

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Residents flee Bangui as rebels pause for talks

BANGUI (Reuters) - Residents of Central African Republic's riverside capital Bangui fled in overloaded cars and boats on Friday and others stockpiled food and water as rebels forces paused at the city gates for ceasefire talks.

An insurgency has swept across much of the poverty-stricken but resource-rich former French colony since December 10, posing the biggest threat yet to President Francois Bozize's nearly 10 years in power and threatening a humanitarian crisis.

The government on Thursday urged Western powers France and the United States to help push back the rebel forces, though Paris said it would not use soldiers to defend Bozize's government and Washington evacuated its embassy.

"Our last chance, our only chance, is dialogue with the rebels," said Jerome Lega, a bus driver, as he weaved through traffic in the center of town.

Scores of wooden boats piled high with baggage and people crossed the Oubangui River toward Democratic Republic of Congo on the other side, while the main road south away from rebel lines was choked with overladen vehicles.

Those remaining said they were hoarding food and water and praying international mediation efforts would convince the insurgents not to enter the city shooting.

"We are hoping that Bangui will not be attacked," said Eugenie Bosso, a woman running a market stall.

Envoys from across central Africa arrived in Bangui on Thursday to lay the groundwork for peace talks with the rebels, and regional foreign ministers were due to meet in Gabon later on Friday to discuss the crisis.

A spokesman for the SELEKA rebel coalition - which said it will oust Bozize unless he honors a previous rebel peace agreement that provided payments to former fighters - said on Thursday that it would halt its advance short of Bangui to allow for the mediation efforts.

A diplomatic source said the rebels had reinforced positions around the city, effectively surrounding it.

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

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

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday said it condemned the rebel advance. Regional and western powers have been pushing for a negotiated solution.

Neighboring Chad has sent troops to help bolster CAR's weak army though it is unclear whether they would be enough to halt a renewed rebel assault on the capital.

The SELEKA coalition brings together three former rebel groups that had largely been contained in CAR's northwest by government forces in recent years, but with foreign backing.

Paris in 2006 defended Bozize's government from a rebel advance using airstrikes. President Francois Hollande on Thursday poured cold water on the latest request for help.

"Those days are over," he said.

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

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

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

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Syria opposition leader rejects Moscow invitation

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's opposition leader has rejected an invitation from Russia for peace talks, dealing another blow to international hopes that diplomacy can be resurrected to end a 21-month civil war.

Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's main international protector, said on Friday it had sent an invitation for a visit to Moaz Alkhatib, whose six-week-old National Coalition opposition group has been recognized by most Western and Arab states as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people.

But in an interview on Al Jazeera television, Alkhatib said he had already ruled out such a trip and wanted an apology from Moscow for its support for Assad.

"We have clearly said we will not go to Moscow. We could meet in an Arab country if there was a clear agenda," he said.

"Now we also want an apology from (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei) Lavrov because all this time he said that the people will decide their destiny, without foreign intervention. Russia is intervening and meanwhile all these massacres of the Syrian people have happened, treated as if they were a picnic."

"If we don't represent the Syrian people, why do they invite us?" Alkhatib said. "And if we do represent the Syrian people why doesn't Russia respond and issue a clear condemnation of the barbarity of the regime and make a clear call for Assad to step down? This is the basic condition for any negotiations."

With the rebels advancing steadily over the second half of 2012, diplomats have been searching for months for signs that Moscow's willingness to protect Assad is faltering.

So far Russia has stuck to its position that rebels must negotiate with Assad's government, which has ruled since his father seized power in a coup 42 years ago.

"I think a realistic and detailed assessment of the situation inside Syria will prompt reasonable opposition members to seek ways to start a political dialogue," Lavrov said on Friday.

That was immediately dismissed by the opposition: "The coalition is ready for political talks with anyone ... but it will not negotiate with the Assad regime," spokesman Walid al-Bunni told Reuters. "Everything can happen after the Assad regime and all its foundations have gone. After that we can sit down with all Syrians to set out the future."

BRAHIMI TO MOSCOW

Russia says it is behind the efforts of U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, fresh from a five-day trip to Damascus where he met Assad. Brahimi, due in Moscow for talks on Saturday, is touting a months-old peace plan for a transitional government.

That U.N. plan was long seen as a dead letter, foundering from the outset over the question of whether the transitional body would include Assad or his allies. Brahimi's predecessor, Kofi Annan, quit in frustration shortly after negotiating it.

But with rebels having seized control of large sections of the country in recent months, Russia and the United States have been working with Brahimi to resurrect the plan as the only internationally recognized diplomatic negotiating track.

Russia's Middle East envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who announced the invitation to Alkhatib, said further talks were scheduled between the "three B's" - himself, Brahimi and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns.

Speaking in Damascus on Thursday, Brahimi called for a transitional government with "all the powers of the state", a phrase interpreted by the opposition as potentially signaling tolerance of Assad remaining in some ceremonial role.

But such a plan is anathema to the surging rebels, who now believe they can drive Assad out with a military victory, despite long being outgunned by his forces.

"We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told reporters at his headquarters there.

Oqaidi said the rebels want Assad and his allies tried in Syria for crimes. Assad himself says he will stay on and fight to the death if necessary.

In the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, demonstrators held up cartoons showing Brahimi speaking to a news conference with toilet bowls in front of him, in place of microphones. Banners denounced the U.N. envoy with obscenities in English.

DIPLOMATS IMPOTENT

Diplomacy has largely been irrelevant to the conflict so far, with Western states ruling out military intervention like the NATO bombing that helped topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last year, and Russia and China blocking U.N. action against Assad.

Meanwhile, the fighting has grown fiercer and more sectarian, with rebels mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority battling Assad's government and allied militia dominated by his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Still, Western diplomats have repeatedly touted signs of a change in policy from Russia, which they hope could prove decisive, much as Moscow's withdrawal of support for Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic heralded his downfall a decade ago.

Bogdanov said earlier this month that Assad's forces were losing ground and rebels might win the war, but Russia has since rowed back, with Lavrov last week reiterating Moscow's position that neither side could win through force.

Still, some Moscow-based analysts see the Kremlin coming to accept it must adapt to the possibility of rebel victory.

"As the situation changes on the battlefield, more incentives emerge for seeking a way to stop the military action and move to a phase of political regulation," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Meanwhile, on the ground the bloodshed that has killed some 44,000 people continues unabated. According to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, 150 people were killed on Thursday, a typical toll as fighting has escalated in recent months.

Government war planes bombarded the town of Assal al-Ward in the Qalamoun district of Damascus province for the first time, killing one person and wounding dozens, the observatory said.

In Aleppo, Syria's northern commercial hub, clashes took place between rebel fighters and army forces around an air force intelligence building in the Zahra quarter, a neighborhood that has been surrounded by rebels for weeks.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Dominic Evans in Beirut and Steve Gutterman and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he saw no reason not to sign a bill into law that would ban Americans adopting Russian children and promised measures to improve care of his country's orphaned youngsters.

Although Putin said he would need to study the final text of the bill, the comments were the strongest indication yet that he will approve the adoption ban legislation, which has strained U.S.-Russia relations.

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

"So far I see no reason not to sign it, although I have to review the final text and weigh everything," Putin said in televised remarks at a meeting of senior federal and regional officials.

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

Critics of the bill say Russia is playing politics with the lives of children. Child rights advocates say children in Russia's crowded and troubled orphanage system will have less of a chance of finding homes if the bill becomes law.

(Reporting By Alexei Anishchuk; Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Steve Guttermann and Andrew Osborn)

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New India rape protests fizzle, victim airlifted to Singapore

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Police thwarted an attempt by activists on Thursday to rekindle mass protests in New Delhi over the gang rape and ferocious beating of a young woman, after the victim was airlifted to Singapore for specialist hospital care to save her life.

Demonstrations erupted in New Delhi after the December 16 attack, culminating last weekend in pitched battles between police and protesters around the city's India Gate war memorial.

However, activists who gathered on Thursday for a fresh march on India Gate were stopped by police in riot gear armed with tear gas and water cannons to hold them back.

"We will win back our freedom!" the protesters, mostly university students, shouted as they pushed against barricades on a road leading to the city's landmark monument. Unable to make further headway, the crowd dispersed as night fell.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex attacks among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to the National Crimes Records Bureau.

Most rapes and other sex crimes go unreported and offenders are rarely punished, but the brutality of the assault on the medical student in New Delhi triggered public outrage, demands for both better policing and harsher punishment for rapists.

The 23-year-old victim, who was thrown out of a moving bus after being attacked by six men, was flown to Singapore on Wednesday night for treatment at the city-state's Mount Elizabeth Hospital, after more than a week of intensive care in a government hospital in New Delhi.

Dr. Kelvin Loh, chief executive officer of the Singapore hospital, said on Thursday evening that the woman was in "an extremely critical condition".

"Prior to her arrival, she has already undergone three abdominal surgeries, and experienced a cardiac arrest in India," Loh said. "A multi-disciplinary team of specialists is taking care of her and doing everything possible to stabilize her condition."

The outcry and spasm of violent protests over the case caught Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government off guard and set off a blame game between politicians and the police.

Singh digressed in a speech on economic planning on Thursday to stress that the safety and security of women was a priority issue for his government, and said there would be a review of the laws and levels of punishment for aggravated sexual assault.

But within an hour of that meeting, his Congress party was plunged into embarrassment over comments made by one of its lawmakers, Abhijit Mukherjee, son of the country's president.

Mukherjee described the anti-rape demonstrations as a "pink revolution" by women wearing heavy make-up who think it is fashionable to protest.

Quizzed repeatedly on news channels, Mukherjee said he regretted causing offence and apologized. However, his comments had already sparked a wave of fury on social media sites and even his own sister said she was "embarrassed" by her brother.

(Writing by Satarupa Bhattacharjya, Additional reporting by Arup Roychoudhury in New Delhi and Hasan Saeed in Singapore; Editing by John Chalmers and Ron Popeski)

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Christian politician quits Egypt upper house as tensions persist

CAIRO (Reuters) - A Christian member of Egypt's upper house of parliament quit on Thursday, reflecting persistent political tensions just a day after the Islamist-dominated chamber took over legislative authority under a contentious new constitution.

The Islamist-backed charter, approved in a referendum this month, is meant to be the cornerstone of a democratic and economically stable Egypt. But the opposition says it is too Islamist and does nothing to protect minorities.

The resignation of Nadia Henry, who represents the Anglican Church in the upper house, also highlights worries by Egypt's Christians, who make up about a tenth of its 83 million population, about political gains made by Islamists since Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a 2011 revolution.

Under pressure to show tolerance towards all groups, President Mohamed Mursi appointed 90 members including Christians, Liberals and women to the upper house - with Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood and ultra-conservative Salafis - last week.

But in a resignation letter published by the state-owned al-Ahram newspaper, Henry said liberal and other minority groups were not represented properly in the chamber.

"I agreed to the membership of the Shura Council (upper house) in the context of consensus that stressed all civil forces will get appointed," Henry wrote.

"Since that did not happen, I hope you accept my apology for not accepting the appointment," she said.

She did not attend the upper house session on Wednesday, the first with the appointed members.

The opposition fears that the Shura Council upper house, which will hold legislative authority until a new parliament is elected in early 2013, will issue laws curbing freedoms.

Mursi signed the new constitution into law this week after two thirds of Egyptian voters approved it in a two-stage referendum this month which the opposition said was marred by widespread violations.

Propelled to power by his Muslim Brotherhood allies this year, Mursi says the constitution and a subsequent vote to elect a permanent lower house will help stop political unrest and allow him to focus on burning economic issues.

Henry was one of the 90 members handpicked by Mursi into the 270-seat council. She was not immediately available for comment.

Any further resignations would threaten the legitimacy of the Shura Council at a time when it is expected to move fast with difficult reforms key to helping Egypt's battered economy.

Two-thirds of the upper house were elected in a vote this year, with one third appointed by the president, some of whom are members of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and other ultra-conservative Salafis.

Mursi and his Islamist allies have urged the opposition to engage in national unity talks to achieve much needed consensus to help end an economic crisis that has widened the budget deficit and sent the Egyptian pound to a eight-year low.

"We stress again that the nation should achieve internal reconciliation and forget its differences," the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mohamed Badei, told Egyptians in his weekly message.

"Let's work seriously to end the reciprocal wars of attrition. We are in an urgent need to unify ranks and group together and focus our capabilities and assets to the general benefit."

The constitution has come under attack from Mursi's opponents after Christians and liberals quit an assembly tasked with drafting the constitution earlier, saying the document gave no guarantees of a civil state and threatened freedoms.

(Editing by Maria Golovnina and Angus MacSwan)

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Iran will open suspect military base if threats dropped: report

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran would let U.N nuclear inspectors into a military base they suspect was used for atomic weapons-related work, if threats against the Islamic Republic are dropped, a government official was quoted as saying.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes Iran conducted explosives tests with possible nuclear applications at Parchin, a sprawling military base southeast of Tehran, and has repeatedly asked to inspect it.

Western diplomats say Iran has carried out extensive work at Parchin over the past year to cleanse it of any evidence of illicit activities but IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said earlier this month a visit would still be "useful".

"If the trans-regional threats (against Iran) dissipate, then they will find it possible to visit Parchin," Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Qashqavi was quoted by the Iranian Labour News Agency as saying on Wednesday. The comments were also published on Thursday by online magazine Iran Diplomacy.

Qashqavi was most likely referring to Israel's threat of military strikes against Iran and the possibility of further sanctions by the West.

Israel has said it will resort to military action if diplomacy fails to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons. Tehran says its nuclear work is entirely peaceful.

Earlier this month, IAEA officials visited Iran to try to negotiate access to Parchin to resolve outstanding issues related to "possible military dimensions" of Iran's nuclear program.

Iran has repeatedly said that a wider agreement on the IAEA's inquiry must be reached before opening the site to inspectors.

(Reporting By Marcus George; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Syria envoy calls for political change to end conflict

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The international envoy seeking a solution to Syria's 21-month-old conflict said on Thursday political change was needed to end the violence which has killed 44,000 people, and called for a transitional government to rule until elections.

Speaking in Damascus at the end of a five-day trip during which he met President Bashar al-Assad, Lakhdar Brahimi did not spell out detailed proposals but said that only substantial change would meet the demands of ordinary Syrians.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov added to the envoy's call for a peaceful solution when he told a senior Syrian diplomat that only a "broad inter-Syria dialogue and political process" could end the crisis.

Brahimi's push for a transitional government suggested he was trying to build on an international agreement in Geneva six months ago which said a provisional body - which might include members of Assad's government as well as the opposition - should lead the country into a new election.

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

Rebel fighters resumed attacks on Thursday against the military base of Wadi Deif, which lies next to Syria's main north-south highway linking Aleppo with Damascus. Around the capital itself, Assad's forces have tried for weeks to dislodge rebels from suburbs which ring the east and south of the city.

"Certainly it was clear in Geneva, and it's even clearer now that the change which is needed is not cosmetic or superficial," Brahimi told a news conference in Damascus before leaving Syria.

"I believe the Syrian people need, want and aspire to genuine change and everyone knows what this means," he said.

"A government must be created ... with all the powers of the state," Brahimi added. He said it should hold power for a transitional period until elections - either for a new president or a new parliament - are held.

"This transitional process must not lead to the ... collapse of state institutions. All Syrians, and those who support them, must cooperate to preserve those institutions and strengthen them," he said.

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

TOO SOON FOR COMPLETE PLAN

Russia's Lavrov met Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Makdad in Moscow on Thursday and underscored "the lack of an alternative to a peaceful resolution of (Syria's) internal conflict through a broad inter-Syria dialogue and political process," a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said. But it made no mention of ways to achieve those goals.

Syrian and Lebanese sources said Makdad had been sent to Moscow to discuss details of a peace plan proposed by Brahimi.

Brahimi is due in Moscow on Saturday and said he also expected to have a third joint meeting with U.S. and Russian officials soon following two rounds of talks earlier this month. But he denied the existence of a U.S.-Russian plan to end the crisis and said it was too soon to present a "complete plan".

"What is preferred is that we don't present such a plan until we feel that all sides have agreed to it. That way, implementing it is easy. If that doesn't happen, the other solution could be to go to the (United Nations) Security Council to issue a binding resolution for everyone," he said.

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman also denied any joint initiative between Moscow and Washington.

World powers remain divided over what has become an increasingly sectarian struggle, with Sunni Muslim states such as Turkey and the Gulf Arab countries supporting the rebels while Shi'ite Iran and Hezbollah have backed Assad, whose Alawite community has its roots in Shi'ite Islam.

Syria's struggle "has taken a vicious form of sectarian confrontation," Brahimi said. "Syrian officials foremost, as well as the international community, must not let Syria slide down this very dangerous path which threatens the future of Syria."

Deep differences between Western powers opposed to Assad - led by the United States - and Russia and China which have supported his government, have left the U.N. Security Council paralyzed and largely sidelined throughout the conflict.

The political stalemate has helped transform a once-peaceful uprising into a civil war in which rebels have grown in military strength and taken control of swathes of territory in the north, leaving Assad increasingly reliant on air power to curb them.

Activists in the central province of Hama, where rebels launched an offensive last week to extend their control southwards towards the capital, reported on Thursday that rebels shot down a MiG jet near the town of Morek.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence across Syria, said air force jets launched three raids on rebel forces around Wadi Deif. The British-based group also reported fierce clashes in the area.

The violence has been accompanied by an escalation in apparently sectarian attacks between the Sunni Muslim majority and minorities such as Assad's Alawite sect, which has largely supported the president.

Activists in Hama uploaded a video of what appeared to be Assad soldiers and shabbiha militia members stabbing the body of a dead man and setting it on fire. The man looked as if he had been beaten to death.

"This is a terrorist, a brother of a whore, one of those trying to destroy the country," one of the men shouted. Two men in camouflage uniforms and army helmets stood by watching. Samer al-Hamawi, an activist from Hama, said rebels in his area found the video on the phone of a soldier they captured this week.

The video emerged a day after Islamist rebel units released footage showing the bodies of dozens of Assad's fighters along a highway near an Alawite town in Hama.

(Additional reporting by Marwan Makdesi in Damascus and Steve Gutterman in Moscow; Editing by Pravin Char)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was the second deadliest attack in CIA history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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