Two a penny

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BEIJING : It was with a straight face the other day that Liu Shaowu, the man with the responsibility of ensuring security for the coming Olympics, announced that the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee would designate three areas in this city for protests and demonstrations while the Games take;place.
“The country's law grants people the right to hold peaceful demonstrations,” Liu intoned as he named three public parks where protests would be;allowed. Still, the announcement, with its recognition of the right to protest, was welcomed by some people.
But this can happen, or course, only after the necessary permits have been obtained from the police, something that has proved virtually impossible in the past.
“The move to set aside protest areas is in line with Beijing's promise to the International Olympic Committee to adhere to Olympic traditions, such as free expression outside sporting venues,” Mo Yuchuan, executive director of the Research Center for Constitutional and Administrative Law at the Renmin University of China, was quoted as saying by The China;Daily. They see it as a realization of the hope that the holding of the Games will encourage China to loosen up a bit on free expression, which, in any case, is guaranteed in its;constitution. They could perhaps be farmers angry about land seizures in the countryside or miners upset about the lack of security measures in coal;mines.
It remains to be seen whether people actually dare to take the Chinese authorities up on this invitation to hold protest demonstrations.
Would-be protesters are no doubt mindful of past Chinese behavior, in which expressions of opinion that were usually not allowed were tolerated to make an impression on some very important visiting foreigners.

But the fact is that whatever the law might be in China, protesters have been far more likely to be met with batons, arrests and imprisonment – and a news blackout on their grievances – than with protection of their constitutional;rights.
In 1998, with President Bill Clinton due to arrive for a state visit, the authorities did not stop a group of dissidents from forming an opposition political party. Then, once the foreigners had left, the sledgehammer;hit.
But no sooner had Clinton left China than the new party was dissolved and its leader, Xu Wenli, was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Evidently they didn't want foreign news reports to be all about arrests of dissidents on the eve of an American presidential;visit.
So, my guess is that there won't be many significant protests in Beijing's parks during the Games. Xu's conviction was for “subverting state power,” one of the catch-all legal devices by which China's state prosecutors transform criticism of the ruling party into acts of;treason.
Still, in general, China seems to be reversing the pattern of the past. But there may certainly be efforts by determined people to unfurl banners and – given the promises made to the International Olympic Committee, or IOC, to allow freedom of expression as a condition for holding the Games – maybe the police won't crack;down.
PEN, the international writers' organization, accuses China of carrying out “a grinding and relentless campaign to jail or silence prominent dissident voices” that has intensified in recent months. Rather than allowing a bit of a thaw in anticipation of the foreign presence, the security forces are actually cracking down;pre-emptively.
Among them, for example, is Hu Jia, who was dragged away from his wife and infant daughter in December and sentenced to three and a half years in prison. PEN has a list of 44 writers and journalists in prison, a dozen or so arrested in the past few;months.
In other words, China is opening up areas for protest in order, as Mo said, to fulfill its promises to the IOC, even as their arrests of people like Hu prove that the promises are being;broken. His crime was disseminating information showing that China was not fulfilling the very promises on human rights it made to secure the;Olympics. And with the great dream of holding the Olympic Games about to be realized, the regime is absolutely determined to ensure that nobody be allowed to spoil the joyous;atmosphere. And with the great dream of holding the Olympic Games about to be realized, the regime is absolutely determined to ensure that nobody be allowed to spoil the joyous;atmosphere.
But China's leaders also know that many in this country seethe with anger and discontent. Publicly, the Chinese say that most of their security measures are aimed at preventing a terrorist attack, and, of course, everybody wishes them success in that. But they are probably just as worried that discontent inside China itself will roil the smooth and shiny surface they want for the;Olympics.

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A Chinese schoolteacher who posted his photographs of quake-damaged schools online has been ordered to a labor camp for a year, a human rights group said;Wednesday.
The group, Human Rights in China, identified the teacher as Liu Shaokun and said he had worked at Guanghan Middle School in Deyang City in southwest Sichuan Province, which was ravaged by the powerful earthquake May;12.
His wife was informed this month that Liu had been ordered to serve a year of re-education through labor, an extrajudicial system that sidesteps the need for trial or formal;charge.
He was detained June 25, and the principal of his school was told that he was being held for “disseminating rumors and destroying social order,” the group;said.

The devastation to families was magnified because many were their parents' only children, because of China's one-child;policy.
The government has said that about 7,000 classrooms collapsed during the quake, and that an estimated 10,000 of the nearly 70,000 dead were;schoolchildren.
China seemed to be moving into a new era of openness after the earthquake, with vigorous reporting from domestic news organizations in the months before the Beijing Olympic Games, which begin Aug.
Parents have demanded investigations into whether shoddy construction led to the school collapses, but local officials have;resisted. But local government officials and law enforcement officers have undermined that trend, trying to quell protests by parents, blocking their gatherings and offering them pensions in exchange for their;silence. 8.
“Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to re-education through labor to silence and lock up concerned citizens like teacher Liu Shaokun and others,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of the rights group, in a;statement.

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan : It was once known as the Parrot's Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the U.S. That was during the Cold;War.-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under;siege.
Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is close to the center of the new kind of struggle.S.
The Taliban, which have solidified control across the Pakistani tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds for attacking U. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries.
And, in a mini-conflict that yet again demonstrates the growing influence of the Taliban and the Pakistani government's lack of control over this sensitive border area, young and old, wounded and able-bodied, have become refugees in their own;land. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 30-kilogram, or 65-pound, bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100.

In June, a Pakistani government relief convoy loaded with food and medicines that had been sent to break the siege was attacked by Taliban at the village of Pir Qayyum.
Thousands of displaced Shiites from Parachinar are scattered among relatives in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, and in hotels and shelters where images of Iranian religious leaders decorate the;halls.
And little seems to be hindering the Taliban since the army, six months ago, agreed to a peace deal with the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, and has remained in its;barracks. Many of the 22 vehicles were burned and 12 drivers were killed by the Taliban, according to government officials here and;Shiites.
From some parts of the tribal areas, like Waziristan and Mohmand, the Bush administration said, the Taliban have stepped up their operations into Afghanistan against NATO and U.
Groups of Taliban affiliated with Mehsud, who according to the Bush administration is supported by Al Qaeda, now control wide swaths of the tribal areas, from Waziristan in the south to Bajur in the;north. soldiers, cross-border attacks that have resulted in rising casualties for coalition forces over the past two;months.S.
But Shiites say the Taliban are doing more than just keeping the government at bay.
In Kurram, the general area where Parachinar is located, the Taliban are a relatively new phenomenon, exploiting the generations-old sectarian conflict as a way of keeping the government out of the strategically important piece of territory, said the senior government official in Kurram, Azam Khan, who serves as the political agent and who organized the June;convoy.
The situation has attracted the attention of the leading Shiite figure of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has encouraged all Shiites in Pakistan to do what they can to help their brethren in Parachinar, said Sheik Mohammed Shifah Alnajafi, the deputy representative of Sistani in Pakistan, and the vice principal of a Shiite seminary in ;Islamabad. The Shiites say that because they are stopping the militants from entering Afghanistan, the Taliban are attacking;them. In Kurram as a whole, the two sects are almost evenly divided, with Parachinar almost entirely Shiite, according to figures from the secretariat of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the body that loosely oversees the tribal;region. In Kurram as a whole, the two sects are almost evenly divided, with Parachinar almost entirely Shiite, according to figures from the secretariat of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the body that loosely oversees the tribal;region.
The origins of the siege reach back to April 2007, when sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis flared over provocative remarks made by a Sunni of Wahhabi beliefs against historical Shiite figures, said Muhammad Amin Shaheedi, the director of the Islamic Research Council in Islamabad, and a leader of the Shiite community in;Pakistan.
But unlike previous bouts of sectarian violence that were settled by mediation after a few days, the tensions mounted, exacerbated by the Taliban, who sided with some of the Sunni, he;said.
Then, on Nov. 16, the tensions exploded in a day of extraordinary violence in Parachinar and surrounding villages, including mortar fire between Sunni mosques and Shiite mosques, said M.B. Bangash, a Shiite businessman from Parachinar who has taken refuge in Peshawar. In contrast to other parts of the tribal areas, the Pakistani army has had a garrison in Parachinar for decades, but it failed to stop the violence, Bangash said. “The government is indifferent,” he ;said.
Some of the moderate Sunni families in Parachinar, who had often helped Shiites in conflicts, were attacked in the November fighting by extremist Shiites and were forced to flee, according to Khan, a well-regarded political agent who was appointed in June to the area in an effort by the government to reduce tensions. This left the general Shiite population feeling more vulnerable to the Taliban, he;said.

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HONG KONG : China and India have seldom shared the same views on free trade in recent years, but they ended up on the same side at the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva on Tuesday because China made an abrupt;about-face.
Growing worries in China about food security now appear to have overridden the country's previous commitment to free trade — a commitment that has served it well until now as the country with the world's second-largest trade surplus after;Germany. It has been especially critical of the United States, for example, for invoking so-called “safeguard” rules to prevent an increase of Chinese textile imports that threatened to put American manufacturers out of;business.
Since joining the World Trade Organization in November 2001, China has been a strong and outspoken defender of free-trade principles. China and India insisted that developing countries be allowed to impose prohibitively high tariffs on food imports from affluent countries to halt increases in imports that might put farmers in poor countries out of;business.
But this week, China allied itself with Indian negotiators in insisting on safeguard rules for agriculture.

In an editorial Wednesday, the official newspaper China Daily denounced the draft text that had been under negotiation.
The United States and other food exporters refused to accept the Chinese and Indian position on food safeguards, and talks broke;down.
By contrast, the Chinese Commerce Ministry had denounced the American use of textile safeguards in 2003 by saying that it was contrary to international principles on “free trade, transparency and;nondiscrimination. “This proposal would put the livelihoods of vulnerable farmers of the developing world in danger due to cheap farms imports from the rich world,” the editorial;said.
Food prices have soared around the globe in recent months, particularly for rice, and many countries with a food surplus have imposed limits on exports to retain supplies for their own populations.”
The strong Chinese stance on farm goods comes at a time of rapidly rising worry in Beijing about food;security.3 billion people in that country, and leery of having to rely on;imports. China has become increasingly focused on making sure that its farmers can continue to produce most of the food needed for the 1. According to a Chinese government statement issued afterward, “Hu said China attaches great importance to agriculture and especially the food issue,” and he noted that China “pursues a food-security policy of relying on domestic supply, ensuring basic self-sufficiency and striking a balance through appropriate import and;export.
President Hu Jintao of China made this point when he met with leaders from the Group of 8 nations in Japan on July 9. They have also held domestic grain prices well below international levels through heavy subsidies, to the point that Chinese officials have been aggressively chasing smugglers who try to buy cheap Chinese rice and other grain and ship it to neighboring countries for;resale.”
Chinese officials have put increasingly stringent limits on the paving over of farmland for factories, office towers and residential projects.
The world's major trading powers forced China to lower or eliminate most of its trade barriers in exchange for letting it into the trade group in November 2001.
Until now, China and India have had divergent vested interests in international trade negotiations because they joined the World Trade Organization under very different circumstances and are covered by remarkably different trade;rules.
Since China has relatively few trade barriers to defend, and since its exports are highly competitive in many industries, it has tended until now to favor open;markets. China accepted this deal because its membership forced other countries to eliminate quotas and cut tariffs on Chinese exports _ — and these exports have been soaring ever;since.
India was one of the 23 founding members in 1947 of the trade group's predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
By contrast, India still has some of the world's highest barriers to;imports.
Kamal Nath, the Indian minister of commerce and industry, and the top Indian trade negotiator, said in a recent interview that developing countries needed to be able to protect their own food supplies.
Kamal Nath, the Indian minister of commerce and industry, and the top Indian trade negotiator, said in a recent interview that developing countries needed to be able to protect their own food supplies. “Every country must first ensure its own food security,” he;said.
Nath also contended that developing countries' farmers have too often faced unfair competition from industrialized countries — a point that China repeated this week. The United States and the European Union agreed to accept some limits on their farm subsidies in negotiations this week, but their reductions were much more limited than developing countries;wanted.

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BEIJING : The Chinese authorities discounted over the weekend claims by a purported Uighur Muslim separatist group in which the group's leader threatened the Olympic Games and took responsibility for fatal bus explosions in Kunming and;Shanghai.
The group, identified as the Turkestan Islamic Party, released a video dated July 23 that featured a statement by a Commander;Seyfullah. “We will try to attack Chinese central cities severely, using tactics that have never been;employed.
“Our aim is to target the most critical points related to the Olympics,” he said, according to a translation by IntelCenter, a terrorism research firm in Washington, which obtained the video.;8.”
In recent weeks, the Chinese authorities have increased security across the country as officials have warned about possible terrorist threats to the Olympics, which open on Aug. The police say that 82 people have been arrested in Xinjiang in connection with possible terror;plots.
In particular, the Chinese police have focused on the restive western region of Xinjiang and singled out a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which promotes independence for Uighur Muslims in the region.
It is also unclear whether the Turkestan Islamic Party, which released the video, is a part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which advocates an independent state in the Xinjiang region.

But some analysts have questioned the government's claims and raised doubts about the true potency of the;group.
In the video, Commander Seyfullah, speaking mostly in the Uighur language, says his group attacked public buses in Kunming on July 21, bombed two buses in Shanghai on May 5 and was responsible for blasts in Wenzhou and;Guangzhou. Turkestan is a region of Central Asia from the Caspian Sea to the Gobi Desert, extending through a number of countries, including;China. Investigators are still searching for suspects and have tripled a reward to 300,000 yuan, or about $43,500.
In Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, two buses exploded on July 21, killing two people and wounding 14 others.
“We have noticed media reports about the claims, but so far, no evidence has been found to indicate the explosions were connected with terrorists and their attacks, or with the Beijing Olympics,” a spokesman for the Yunnan Province Department of Public Security told the official news agency;Xinhua.
But on Saturday, the authorities played down any terror;links.
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Ian Urbina reported from;Washington

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YAKUMO, Japan : There was no inherent reason that this northern Japanese town, population 19,743, had never had a lawyer until now. It had its share of people with debts, disputes over property, wrangling over inheritances – enough disharmony, certainly, to keep at least one lawyer;busy.
If it was not unusual for towns with five times Yakumo's population to have no lawyer, how could Yakumo hope to secure one just for;itself?
And yet, thanks to a national campaign to raise the number of lawyers, and to dispatch them to lawyerless corners of Japan, Yakumo welcomed its first one in April.
But Japan, as a counterpoint to the United States, has long suffered from a deficit of lawyers, especially in the;countryside.
Its prominent location aside, the office was perhaps lost amid the restaurants, izakaya pubs, drugstores and other small businesses that form the landscape surrounding train stations in Japanese small;towns. The Yakumo Legal Office opened shop, behind gray blinds and under blue awnings, in the square facing the train;station. “A lawyer?” he asked;incredulously.

Even the longtime owner of a sushi restaurant a stone's throw away had somehow failed to notice his exotic new neighbor. He walked half a minute from the station and slipped into the office through a side;door.
On a recent morning, the lawyer, Katsumune Hirai, arrived on the 10:29 train from Hakodate, the close toest city. And Hirai, who lives in Hakodate but is from Tokyo, was still really getting to know this town.
Yakumo is part of an even larger legal district of some 50,000 people without a lawyer, he said. Introductions, he said, were not his strong;suit. He had yet to visit the town hall, the seat of power in any Japanese town, and present his business cards there.
“Tokyo's economy is doing well these days,” said Hirai, a baby-faced 33-year-old who has been practicing law for four years.
He was perplexed that, so far, few had come to him for advice on handling debts, the biggest source of work for lawyers right;now. The economy's very weak in the countryside, so we see a great number of consultations nationwide about debts, especially from people with highly urgent;matters. “But the rest of Japan still hasn't recovered. In the past, they would have gone to look for a lawyer in Hakodate, no;doubt.”
Many clients with land disputes have come to him, referred by real estate agents unable to resolve the problems themselves.
That is what Hirai had learned at the Japan Federation of Bar Association, where he participated in efforts to send lawyers to the;hinterlands.
“Or, I think, many just resigned themselves to their fate,” he;said. Still, even including those professions, Japan has only about one-third of the lawyers found in the United States per capita, according to the;federation.
In Japan, other legal professionals, including notaries and tax accountants, often perform the duties that fall to lawyers in the United States.
The Japanese government is trying to increase the number of lawyers as part of broader judicial reforms that have included establishing 74 law schools since 2004.
The Japanese government is trying to increase the number of lawyers as part of broader judicial reforms that have included establishing 74 law schools since 2004. Under the system that will be abolished in 2011, anyone could take the national bar exam, though it was so difficult that the annual pass rate was about 3;percent.
The government predicted that at least 70 percent of law school graduates would pass the new national bar exam, creating 3,000 new lawyers a year by 2010. But with only 40 percent passing last year, and the low rate driving down law school applications, the government is almost certain to miss its;goal.
Here in Yakumo, four clients came to see Hirai on a recent day: an older woman worried about leaving an inheritance to an adopted son; a middle-aged salaryman who had hit a female employee; two clients involved in land disputes, one dating from the;1930s.
Like many Japanese who consult lawyers, the four seemed embarrassed about doing;so.
“Japanese by nature don't want to publicize their problems,” Hirai explained. “And coming to see a lawyer is to admit that there are problems inside your home or;workplace.”
It was precisely to dispel the shame of consulting a lawyer that Hirai chose to open his office in the town's most prominent;square.
“After all, this is a small town,” he said. “Because I'm right in front of the train station, everybody will know if a person came to this office. If I'd settled instead in a more secluded part of town, people might think that this is a shady business after all, and that I'm a bad;guy.”

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WASHINGTON : President George W. Bush has held private talks with five prominent Chinese dissidents, and has urged China's foreign minister to relax restrictions on human rights, as part of an intensifying White House effort to put pressure on Beijing before Bush travels there in a little more than a week for the summer Olympic;Games.
Earlier, Bush dropped in on a meeting between his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and China's foreign minister, Yang;Jiechi.
Bush received the dissidents – Harry Wu, Wei Jingsheng, Rebiya Kadeer, Sasha Gong and Bob Fu – on Tuesday in the White House residence, where he “assured them that he will carry the message of freedom as he travels to Beijing,” said his press secretary, Dana;Perino. The president has faced criticism from human rights advocates and members of Congress for his decision to attend.
The back-to-back meetings came shortly before Bush leaves for an Asia trip that will include the Olympics.
“This is a welcome step, and President Bush should now speak forcefully about China's human rights situation, because quiet diplomacy alone has shown little success,” T. But his meetings Tuesday drew praise from some of those;critics.

In a report issued this week, Amnesty International accused China of breaking its promise to open up freedoms in exchange for permission from the International Olympic Committee to host the 2008 Games. Kumar, the Asia advocacy director at Amnesty International USA,;said.
The official said the dissidents told Bush that an estimated 80 million to 100 million Chinese are worshiping in underground churches. A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss delicate diplomatic matters, said Bush shared that;concern.
Bush has long said that he views the Olympics as a sporting event, not a political one. “He wants to see that open up,” the official said, adding that Bush also wants to press China to relax restrictions on the news;media.
Michael Green, an Asia expert and former adviser to Bush, said the White House must now contemplate how Bush should express his concerns while he is in Beijing. But he has also said he would use his attendance at the Games to press China on human rights;matters.
Green said Bush's meeting with the dissidents was aimed at both addressing his critics and sending a pointed message to the;Chinese. During a trip in 2005, the president attended a state-controlled church there and then held a news conference about it, a tactic that Green said got the attention of China's;leaders. “These are people designed to get the Chinese's attention.
“These are very high-profile people,” Green said. It was an important move to let Chinese leaders know that he's not satisfied with the;progress. It was not just a political move to provide cover at home.”

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AHMADABAD, India : Police defused another explosive device Wednesday in western India, bringing the total number of unexploded bombs found there in the last two days to;19.
The discovery of the bombs in the diamond-polishing center of Surat on Tuesday and Wednesday came after 22 explosions tore through the nearby city of Ahmadabad over the weekend, killing 42 people and wounding;183. Authorities initially reported two deaths there but later said the second death was not related to the;attack.
Seven small blasts also shook Bangalore in the south, killing one person.M.
Surat Police Commissioner R. Brar said the 19th bomb was discovered Wednesday morning in one of the city's markets, and police were telling people to avoid gathering in public;places.S.

An obscure Islamic militant group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen took credit for the attack Saturday in Ahmadabad, although authorities believe the claim may be an attempt by one of a handful of better-known groups to cover its;tracks.
The discovery left Surat a virtual ghost town, sending fearful residents back to their homes and shuttering what businesses had not already closed after 18 explosives were found a day earlier, Brar;said.
Authorities said four cars — two used in Saturday's Ahmadabad attack and the two found in Surat — were stolen earlier in July from a Mumbai suburb, Navi;Mumbai.
On Tuesday, authorities launched a massive manhunt in a suburb of Mumbai, India's financial capital, where investigators believe the bomb plots were;hatched.
India has been plagued by bombings in recent years.
Police said they believe the bombers used Navi Mumbai as the headquarters to plan the attack because they thought their activities would likely go undetected in the nondescript;suburb.
Authorities are also checking the computer of a 48-year-old American citizen living in Mumbai to find out if an e-mail claiming responsibility for the attack was sent from it, or if unknown attackers accessed his wireless Internet;connection. Almost all have been blamed on Islamic militants who allegedly want to provoke violence between India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority, although officials rarely offer hard evidence implicating specific;groups. Police said Tuesday that Haywood was not a suspect and it appeared the bombers had accessed his wireless network connection to send the;e-mail.
Police seized Kenneth Haywood's computer Monday after tracing an e-mail claiming responsibility for the attack to the machine.

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WASHINGTON : A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan's most senior officials with new information about ties between the country's powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence;officials.
The CIA emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups who were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials;said. 11, 2001,;attacks.
The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new CIA assessment of the spy service's activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants since shortly after the Sept.
The CIA has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept.
The CIA assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal;areas.

That ISI officers have maintained important ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of previous news reports. 11;attacks.
The visit to Pakistan by the CIA official, Stephen Kappes, the deputy director, was described by several American military and intelligence officials in interviews in recent days. But the CIA and the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in the fight against;terrorism.
Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is currently in Washington meeting with Bush administration officials. Some of those who were interviewed made clear that they welcomed the decision by the CIA to take a harder line toward the ISI's dealings with militant;groups.
In an interview broadcast Tuesday on the American public television program “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” Gilani said he rejected as “not believable” any assertions of the ISI's links to the militants. A White House spokesperson, Gordon Johndroe, would not say whether Bush had raised the issue during his meeting Monday with;Gilani.
The Haqqani network and other militants who operate in the tribal areas along the Afghan border are said by American intelligence officials to be responsible for increasingly deadly complex attacks inside Afghanistan, and to have helped Al Qaeda establish a haven in the tribal;areas. “We would not allow that,” he;said.
The ISI has for decades maintained contacts with various militant groups in the tribal areas and elsewhere, both for gathering intelligence and as proxies to exert influence on neighboring India and;Afghanistan.
Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, the acting commander of American forces in Southwest Asia, made an unannounced visit to the tribal areas on Monday, a further reflection of American;concern.
With Pakistan's new civilian government struggling to assert control over the country's spy service, there are concerns in Washington that the ISI might become even more powerful than when President Pervez Musharraf controlled the military and the;government.
It is unclear whether the CIA officials have concluded that contacts between the ISI and militant groups are blessed at the highest levels of Pakistan's spy service and military, or are carried out by rogue elements of Pakistan's security;apparatus.
Kappes made his secret visit to Pakistan on July 12, joining Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for meetings with senior Pakistani civilian and military;leaders.
Last weekend, Pakistani military and intelligence officials thwarted an attempt by the government in Islamabad to put the ISI more directly under civilian;control.
The official was briefed on the meetings; like others who agreed to talk about it, he spoke on condition of anonymity as a result of the diplomatic delicacy of Kappes's;message.
“It was a very pointed message saying, 'Look, we know there's a connection, not just with Haqqani but also with other bad guys and ISI, and we think you could do more and we want you to do more about it,”' one senior American official;said. Afghanistan's government has publicly blamed the ISI for having a hand in the attack, an accusation American officials have not;corroborated. Afghanistan's government has publicly blamed the ISI for having a hand in the attack, an accusation American officials have not;corroborated.
The decision to have Kappes deliver the message about the spy service was an unusual one, and could be a sign that the relationship between the CIA and ISI, which has long been marked by mutual suspicion as well as mutual dependence, may be;deteriorating.

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BEIJING : A Chinese schoolteacher who posted his photographs of quake-damaged schools on the Internet has been ordered to a labor camp for a year, a human rights group said;Wednesday.
The group, Human Rights in China, identified the teacher as Liu Shaokun and said he worked at Guanghan Middle School in Deyang City in Sichuan Province, which was ravaged by the powerful earthquake on May;12.
Liu's wife was informed this month that he had been ordered to serve a year of re-education through labor, in an extrajudicial system that sidesteps the need for a trial or formal;charges.
He was detained June 25, and the principal of his school was told that he was being held for “disseminating rumors and destroying social order,” the group;said.

The government has said that about 7,000 classrooms collapsed during the quake, and that an estimated 10,000 of the nearly 70,000 victims were schoolchildren.
Human Rights in China said Liu's family had not been able to see him since he was;detained.
Parents have demanded investigations into whether poor construction led to the school collapses, but local officials have;resisted. The devastation to families was magnified because many had only a single child, the result of China's one-child;policy.;8.
China had seemed to be moving into a new era of openness in the wake of the earthquake, which was vigorously covered by domestic news organizations, and in the months before the Olympic Games in Beijing, which begin Aug.
“Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to reeducation through labor to silence and lock up concerned citizens like teacher Liu Shaokun and others,” Sharon Hom, executive director of the rights group, said in a;statement.
But local government officials and law enforcement officers have been trying to quell protests by parents, blocking their gatherings and offering them pensions in exchange for their;silence.
An official at the Communist Party's propaganda office in Guanghan said he had not heard of the case.
Yin Shuaiyong, a spokesperson based in Beijing for the Ministry of Public Security, said he could not immediately;comment.
Another official with the general office of the Guanghan school said Liu had been working there since;2002. He would give only his surname, Tang, as is common among Chinese;bureaucrats. “They searched his home and found;evidence.
“He was detained late the previous month by people from national security bureau for deliberately inciting families of victims to petition and disseminating antigovernment rumors,” said the official, who refused to give his name.
The system, in place since 1957, allows the police to incarcerate a crime suspect for up to four years.”
The system of re-education through labor has been widely criticized by the United Nations, the European Union and others who say it should be abolished as part of Beijing's acceptance of international legal;standards.
. Critics say it is misused to detain political or religious activists, and violates suspects';rights