Israel
Palestinian election progress reported
Israeli leaders told Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday they would work to ensure free and open Palestinian elections on Jan. 9, including easing travel restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials said they also were considering ways to allow Palestinians living in East Jerusalem to vote, likely by mail. They have ruled out allowing polling places in the city.
The most important decision about who will run for president of the Palestinian Authority was made Monday by the Fatah movement's 15-member Central Committee, which nominated former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas as the group's presidential candidate for the Jan. 9 election.
The choice by the 13 committee members who voted -- almost all of whom are in their 60s and 70s -- was unanimous.
Paris
Nephew blames Israel for Arafat's death
Freshly armed with Yasser Arafat's weighty medical dossier, his nephew pinned blame on Israel for the late Palestinian leader's death and refused Monday to squelch rumors of poisoning -- even though he acknowledged that doctors found no known poisons.
Nasser al-Kidwa, who is also the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, said the files were inconclusive on the cause of Arafat's death, but "I believe the Israeli authorities are largely responsible for what happened."
His accusation, at a Paris news conference two hours after French authorities gave him the files despite objections from Arafat's widow, could inflame suspicions among Palestinians that Israel was somehow to blame -- if only by confining Arafat to his West Bank headquarters for the last three years of his life, as Al-Kidwa asserted.
He said he had no doubts that Arafat's still undisclosed illness was "connected to the conditions that the late president was living and suffering from. ... This is a principle part of the issue."
Iraq
Allawi confident election will succeed
Iraq's interim prime minister said Monday he was confident only a small number of people would boycott the Jan. 30 elections despite anger among many Sunni Muslims over the Fallujah offensive and a deadly U.S.-Iraqi raid on a Baghdad mosque.
Allawi, a secular Shiite hand-picked by the Americans last June, said he believed that only "a very small minority" would abstain during the election "for one reason or another."
"Their reason will be political, and not sectarian, and they will not be more than 5, 6 or 7 percent," Allawi said. "They are the eventual losers."
India
Officials cite drop in Kashmir militants
A clampdown by Pakistan along with a new offensive by Indian forces have cut nearly in half the number of separatist militants operating in violence-torn Kashmir, Indian military and intelligence officials said Monday.
The report came as India and Pakistan have been making goodwill gestures in an attempt to ease tensions over the most flashpoint issue between them, the Himalayan region divided between the two countries.
Gen. Nirmal Chandra Vij said Indian security forces' crackdowns against militants have been very successful. "The internal offensive against militants has brought down the number of militants by half -- from 3,500 to around 1,800 inside Jammu and Kashmir," he said.
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