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Peru: Congress Repeals Contested Indian Land Laws

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Peru's congress voted Friday to repeal two laws facilitating the sale of Indian lands that had generated protests by dozens of tribes in the Amazon rain forest.

Lawmakers voted 66-29 in favor of repealing the laws, which were passed by presidential decree earlier this year to promote private investment in tribal lands.

Thousands of Indians celebrated the lawmakers' decision in the main plaza of Bagua, a Peruvian jungle city where protesters clashed with police on Wednesday.

"This is a new dawn for our people and for all Peruvians who wish to develop in liberty, not in oppression," said Alberto Pizango, president of the Peruvian Jungle Inter-Ethnic Development Association, which represents the protesters.

By Peruvian law, the repeal must be approved by President Alan Garcia, who is likely to modify the measures and send them back to congress in coming days, Interior Minister Luis Alva said.

The laws would allow an indigenous community to approve the sale of tribal lands by simple majority vote -- eliminating a provision that had made it nearly impossible to develop communal property.

But 65 Indian tribes mobilized against the laws, which they said would speed up the loss of their land. They launched 11 days of protests, blocking highways and threatening to stop the flow of natural gas and oil at two key Amazon pipelines.

The tribes agreed to suspend the protests two days ago in anticipation of the vote in congress.

On Wednesday, Garcia warned that repealing the laws would be a historic mistake condemning Peru's Indians to "another century of backwardness and misery."

Garcia decreed the law using special legislative powers he was granted to implement U.S. requirements for a free trade pact between the nations.

AP-CS-08-22-08 2222EDT

Australia: Aborigine Wants Boomerang Returned From Britain

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - An Aboriginal leader said Friday he wants a boomerang to return to Australia more than 300 years after it was taken as a souvenir by celebrated British explorer Capt. James Cook.

The boomerang will be auctioned in London on Sept. 25. Auctioneer Christie's director Nick Lambourn expects the unmarked 22-inch (56-centimeter) wooden artifact will fetch up to $113,000.

Cook, who led the first Europeans to discover Australia's fertile east coast in 1770, collected the boomerang at the site of present day Sydney, Australia's first British colony.

Aboriginal leader Merv Ryan said his Gweigal people felt strongly that the boomerang -- an iconic weapon crafted to return to the spot from where it was thrown -- should return to what is now the Sydney bayside suburb of Kurnell, the site where Cook first met Aborigines.

"Having the boomerang back in Kurnell will be a historic symbol of harmony between our two cultures and will help teach young Australians about the importance of Aboriginal culture," Ryan said.

The Australian government is considering bidding for the boomerang while Sydney lawmaker Scott Morrison, whose electoral district includes Kurnell, said the British should return it to Australia as a gift.

Heritage Minister Peter Garrett, who as a rock singer with the band Midnight Oil had championed Aboriginal causes, has asked his department to investigate buying the boomerang, his spokesman Ben Pratt said.

History does not record how Cook came by the boomerang. It has remained for generations with the family of the executor of his widow's will.

AP-ES-08-22-08 0600EDT

England: Senior Muslim Officer Sues Scotland Yard For Discrimination

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER
Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) - Scotland Yard said Friday that its highest ranking Muslim police officer is suing the force, reportedly claiming religious and racial discrimination.

Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, the man charged with handling London's 2012 Olympic security preparations, is suing his employers for 1.2 million pounds (US$2.2 million) on racial and religious grounds, according to the British Broadcasting Corp., which did not cite a source for its report.

A spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police said he understood that Ghaffur had initiated legal proceedings at an employment tribunal, but said the force had not yet been served with legal papers and could offer no further comment. He spoke anonymously in line with police policy.

Ghaffur, born in Uganda to parents of Pakistani descent, joined Manchester's police force in 1974. He switched to the Metropolitan Police in 1999 and rose to assistant commissioner -- the force's third-highest position -- in 2001. Ghaffur has used the high-visibility post to speak out against racism among police, warning in 2006 that some officers were alienating minorities by stereotyping them as criminals.

Scotland Yard handles some of the country's most sensitive terrorism cases but has in the past had an openly contentious relationship with its minority employees. In 2001 the force suspended Iranian-born Ali Dizaei, accusing him of obstructing justice and faking expenses. Dizaei was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing, but the fallout from the case was so toxic that, in 2003, the head of a major black officers' group urged nonwhite candidates against applying for jobs with London's police because discrimination was so pervasive.

A contact number for Ghaffur could not immediately be located.

AP-CS-08-22-08 1901EDT

Ghana: UN Climate Conference Reaching Consensus on Pollution Control

By ARTHUR MAX
Associated Press Writer

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) - Delegates at a key U.N. climate conference made headway on a plan to encourage developing countries to regulate carbon emissions by focusing on their largest industries.

The emerging plan sidesteps objections from countries like India and China, which refuse to accept national targets for the overall emission of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

How to get developing countries to commit to reducing pollution levels has deeply divided countries seeking to craft a new climate change agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The meeting of 1,600 delegates and environmentalists from 160 countries was the third conference this year working on the accord, due to be adopted in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Accra meeting also was discussing ways to integrate the conservation of the world's ever-shrinking forests into the Copenhagen agreement, as well as studying ways to raise and distribute the tens of billions of dollars needed annually to help poor countries deal with the consequences of climate change.

Under the Kyoto pact, only 37 industrial countries committed to meet specific targets. Together, they were required to cut emissions by an average 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. The United States refused to participate in the Kyoto regime because it excluded China and other large newly powerful economies from any obligation.

Korea, which is not one of the 37, surprised delegates by announcing Friday that next year it will adopt a target for reducing its carbon emissions by 2020, but declined to give specifics. Earlier this year, South Africa also said it would embrace self-imposed targets, peaking its emissions by 2025.

Under the "sectoral approach" now taking shape, developing countries would set pollution targets for specific industries, like cement, steel or aluminum. Unlike the 37 industrial countries, they likely would not be punished for missing their goals.

"Something quiet but quite dramatic is happening," said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "People are now talking about the same idea in the same language."

India voiced reservations, but did not reject the concept. As for China, Doniger said the plan fit neatly with Beijing's intention to increase the efficiency of its key industries, which produce the bulk of its carbon emissions.

Details of any agreement on the new approach would be complex and difficult to reach, and it is only one of many disputed components of a post-2012 pact.

But consensus appeared to coalesce around the notion that industrial countries will remain legally bound to meet a national cap on their carbon emissions, while developing countries would have flexibility in deciding which industries would be controlled and at what levels.

A critical element calls for advanced countries to provide the technology and funding to help other countries curb emissions in heavily polluting industries.

"There is now a basis for discussion," said Katrin Gutmann, policy coordinator of the WWF Global Climate Initiative. "Before, we worried there would just be more clashes," But financing remains unresolved and it was unclear how governments would move forward, she said.

Japan, which advanced the proposal earlier this year to a chorus of criticism, said it was pleased with the response in Accra after it dropped several components that aroused objections. Developing countries had feared the Japanese proposal was a backdoor device to impose binding targets that would limit their economic development.

"That is a great advancement compared with the beginning of this year," Japanese delegate Jun Arima told the conference.

AP-CS-08-22-08 2004EDT

Hong Kong: China Refuses Visa For Tiananmen Square Protest Leader

By MIN LEE
Associated Press Writer

HONG KONG (AP) - An exiled student leader who took part in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989 said Saturday that China has blocked him from visiting Hong Kong during the Olympics.

Wang Dan said in a statement from Los Angeles that the Chinese consulate in that city refused to accept his application for a visa to visit Hong Kong for a talk Saturday.

Wang said the consulate rejected his application because his Chinese passport expired in 2003 -- but Chinese officials have also refused to renew his passport. He currently travels on a travel document issued by the U.S. government.

"As the Olympics are being held, we've seen the Chinese government promise to be more open to the world. But it can't even be open to its own citizens. How can this kind of openness convince people?" Wang said in his statement.

The former student leader says he applied for a Hong Kong visa once before and was also denied.

A former British colony, Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, but it maintains separate political and financial systems from the mainland and is promised Western-style civil liberties commonly denied in China.

Calls to the Chinese foreign ministry Saturday went unanswered and the office didn't immediately respond to a fax seeking comment.

China has deported pro-Tibet activists who have protested at the Olympics in Beijing, which end Sunday. Hong Kong officials have also turned away pro-democracy activists at the airport.

Wang rose to global prominence as one of the students who led the pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. After a deadly crackdown on the demonstrations, Wang was jailed and later went into exile in the United States.

He recently graduated from Harvard University with a doctorate in history.

A spokeswoman for one of the organizers of the Hong Kong talk said she was frustrated by China's refusal to renew Wang's passport.

"If we're always stuck on this point, he'll never be able to visit Hong Kong. ... The situation becomes very desperate," said Cheung Ping-ling, a spokeswoman for Homecoming, a group that lobbies for exiled Chinese dissidents.

Wang has also expressed interest in applying for teaching posts in Hong Kong.

AP-CS-08-23-08 0126EDT

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