Three accused in Indian rape case finally get legal help

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Three of the men accused of raping and murdering an Indian student have asked lawyers to defend them and the lawyers have agreed to do so, even though most of the judiciary has refused to represent the suspects because of outrage over the attack.

The 23-year-old physiotherapy student died two weeks after being beaten and gang-raped on a moving bus in New Delhi, then thrown bleeding onto the street. Protests followed, along with a fierce public debate over police failure to stem rampant violence against women.

Five men and a teenager have been accused of the December 16 attack but with public anger simmering, most lawyers in the district where the trial will be held have ruled out representing them.

But two lawyers, V. K. Anand and Manohar Lal Sharma, offered to defend the five men when they appeared in a New Delhi court for the first time on Monday, despite the condemnation of their legal colleagues.

The lawyers said on Tuesday three of the five had asked to be represented by them.

"I understand the sentiments of the people. But you cannot go by sentiments," Anand told Reuters. "The accused have a right to justice just as the victim has."

Legal experts had said a lack of representation for the five could give grounds for appeal if they were found guilty. Convictions in similar cases have often been overturned years later.

The five accused men are facing various charges including murder, rape and abduction and prosecutors have said they would seek the death penalty.

Anand said he would represent Ram Singh, the driver of the bus on which the rape took place, and had a preliminary meeting with him on Tuesday to work on a defense plan.

"There are many aspects. He has conceded some things and also talked about the role of others," Anand said. He declined to go into details.

The other lawyer, Sharma, said he would also be representing Singh as well as two other men.

The court must confirm the two lawyers as defenders when it next convenes on January 10.

The other two of the five accused men had yet to ask for legal representation, the lawyers said. The sixth member of the group, who is a teenager, will be tried separately in a juvenile court.

"COMPLICATED CASE"

On Monday, Anand and Sharma were heckled when they offered to defend the men during rowdy scenes in court before the pre-trial hearing.

Sharma said denying the men a legal defense would only make it easier for courts to throw out the case if not now, then later, if it went to an appeal.

Since their arrest soon after the assault on the woman and a male companion, the men have not had any lawyers. Police have conducted extensive interrogations of the men and say they have recorded confessions

"This is a critical, complicated case. All the more reason it should be tried in a fair manner," said Sharma, who practices at the Supreme Court.

The case has shone a light on a widespread problem of violence against women but also the failure of the criminal justice system to bring the guilty to justice in a country where official statistics show a rape is reported every 20 minutes.

The case will be heard in a special fast-track process, set up after the attack, but some legal experts have warned that previous attempts to fast-track justice in India in some cases led to imperfect convictions that were later challenged.

Anand said comments by the woman's male companion, who was badly beaten, about how they were left unattended afterwards and how the police wrangled over whose jurisdiction the crime had been committed in had exposed lapses in the investigation.

"This is not an open and shut case," Anand said. He did not go into specifics.

The woman's friend told Zee television that passers-by left the pair lying unclothed and bleeding in the street while police officers argued over where to take them after they arrived 45 minutes later.

Police said the first police van reached the scene four minutes after it was called and took the man and the woman to hospital within 24 minutes.

The woman lived for two weeks after the attack but died in a Singapore hospital where she had been taken for treatment.

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Syrians brush off Assad speech as fighting rages

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Fighting raged across Syria on Monday with clashes reported just a few miles from where President Bashar al-Assad had unveiled a "peace plan" that Syrians on both sides said would do nothing to end the country's 21-month-old uprising.

Hours after Assad addressed cheering loyalists at the Damascus Opera House on Sunday in his first public speech in months, fighting erupted near the road to the city's international airport, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The opposition-linked group said artillery hit the district of Aqraba, 3 miles from the Opera House. Fighting continued all night and into Monday around the capital, as well as in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, it said.

In central Syria, the towns of Taybet Imam and Halfaya were bombarded with aerial strikes and artillery, said Abu Faisal, an activist speaking over the internet from Taybet Imam.

"Every four to five minutes, we hear the burst from a rocket. We cannot get any wounded out because we are essentially under siege by the shelling," he said, adding that many civilians had fled. Taybet Imam sits on an entrance to Syria's main north-south highway, close to the central city of Hama.

The government restricts access by international media and the accounts could not be verified.

Damascus residents said Assad's speech, which offered no concessions to his foes, was met with celebratory gunfire in pro-Assad neighborhoods.

But even there, some saw no sign peace was closer: a loyalist resident of southern Damascus reached by internet said the speech was eloquent but empty.

"It sounded more like gloating than making promises," said the woman, who gave only her first name, Aliaa. "I agree with the ideas but words are really just words until he takes some action. He needs to do something. But even so, everything he suggests now, it is too late, the rebels aren't going to stop."

"NO ONE CARES"

In the once-affluent district of Mezzeh, scene of several bomb attacks, an Assad critic said people had more pressing concerns than a TV speech. "Here, no one cares about this speech. They care about food and electricity."

Another said few people had watched the speech and that Assad's crackdown would not stop: "Military operations will continue in full swing, and he is staying."

France, the United States, Britain and Turkey all said Assad's speech, his first to an audience since June last year, showed he had lost touch with reality after unrest that the United Nations says has killed 60,000 people.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had harsh words for Assad when she was asked whether the United States regarded him as a rational actor and whether he was "evil."

"I don't think anybody who is guilty of the kinds of crimes against your own people that he's guilty of could be considered rational," Nuland told reporters in Washington. "I personally consider what he's done evil."

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Assad on Monday of "directing state terrorism".

"Bashar al-Assad's speech is further evidence of just how far he has cut himself off from reality in order to justify his repression of the Syrian people," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said.

The plan described by the Syrian leader as a new peace initiative proposed an army ceasefire only after rebels halt their operations and summoned Syrians to mobilize for a war to defend the state against "a puppet made by the West".

The United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was disappointed that Assad's speech rejected the idea of a transitional government to pave the way to new elections - a central plank of a peace plan promoted by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

"NATIONAL PROGRAMME"

Syria's Prime Minister Wael al-Halki called on Monday for a special cabinet meeting to implement the "national program announced by President Bashar al-Assad yesterday to solve the crisis in Syria", the state news agency SANA said.

George Sabra, vice president of the opposition National Coalition, said the putative peace plan "did not even deserve to be called an initiative".

"We should see it rather as a declaration that he will continue his war against the Syrian people," he told Reuters.

Assad's ally Iran defended the speech as offering a "comprehensive political process". "This plan rejects violence and terrorism and any foreign interference," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said.

There was no immediate response from Moscow, which has acted as Assad's main protector on the diplomatic stage. Russian state offices were quiet for the Orthodox Christmas holiday.

Syrian state television played up the speech, showing footage of convoys of cars driving through main streets in Damascus. People waving the Syrian flag leaned out of car windows and some braved the cold and rain to walk alongside.

"It was a victorious speech that respects the martyred Syrian soldiers," said one man on state TV, adding that his brother had been killed fighting the opposition.

After six months of advances, rebels now control wide areas of northern and eastern Syria, most of its border crossings with Turkey and a crescent of Damascus suburbs.

Assad's government is still firmly entrenched in the capital and controls most of the densely populated southwest, the Mediterranean coast, the main north-south highway and military bases countrywide. Its helicopters and jets are able to strike rebel-held areas with impunity.

U.S. military cargo planes carrying equipment and personnel arrived at the Incirlik air base in Turkey on Monday, part of a deployment of NATO Patriot anti-missiles to bolster security along Turkey's 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria. Dutch Patriot missile batteries bound for Turkey left an army base in the Netherlands.

(Additional reporting by Ayat Basma in Beirut, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Vicky Buffery in Paris and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; writing by Peter Graff; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Giles Elgood)

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Tunisia frees man held over attack on U.S. consulate in Libya

Tunis (Reuters) - Tunisia has freed, for lack of evidence, a Tunisian man who had been suspected of involvement in an Islamist militant attack in Libya last year in which the U.S. ambassador was killed, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Ali Harzi was one of two Tunisians named in October by the Daily Beast website as having been detained in Turkey over the violence in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other American officials were killed.

"The judge decided to free Harzi and he is free now," lawyer Anouar Awled Ali told Reuters. "The release came in response to our request to free him for lack of evidence and after he underwent the hearing with American investigators as a witness in the case."

A Tunisian justice ministry spokesman confirmed the release of Harzi but declined to elaborate.

A month ago, Harzi refused to be interviewed by visiting U.S. FBI investigators over the September 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

The Daily Beast reported that shortly after the attacks began, Harzi posted an update on an unspecified social media site about the fighting.

It said Harzi was on his way to Syria when he was detained in Turkey at the behest of U.S. authorities, and that he was affiliated with a militant group in North Africa.

(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Turkey, Ocalan map out steps to end Kurdish conflict

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The Turkish government and the jailed leader of a Kurdish insurgency have agreed on the framework for a plan to end a war that has killed 40,000 people since 1984, envisaging rebel disarmament in exchange for increased minority rights, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

The Radikal daily said senior intelligence officials had held meetings with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) chief Abdullah Ocalan in his island jail near Istanbul, yielding a four-stage plan to halt the conflict.

Previous negotiations with the PKK were highly secretive and appeared to have run aground. The open acknowledgment of the latest contact has raised hopes for a renewed peace effort, including from the main pro-Kurdish party in parliament.

"Meeting with Ocalan...is a correct step, it's logical and appropriate," Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) leader Selahattin Demirtas told members of his party in the assembly in Ankara.

"Peace in Turkey can only begin with this step."

Radikal said that after an initial end to hostilities the PKK fighters would withdraw from Turkish territory, after which disarmament talks would begin, before a final process of the militants laying down their weapons.

Ocalan will prepare four letters setting out his vision for a solution to the conflict to be addressed to the BDP, to the PKK commanders in northern Iraq, to Europe, where many PKK activists are based, and to the Turkish public, Radikal said.

The "roadmap" would involve releasing from custody thousands of people accused of PKK links.

It would also lead to constitutional reforms removing obstacles to Kurdish language education, strengthening local administrations and an ethnically neutral definition of citizenship, describing people as citizens of Turkey rather than Turkish citizens.

There was no official confirmation of any agreement and Radikal did not specify its sources but it is generally regarded as being reliable on the Kurdish issue.

Ocalan's demands appeared to be limited, with no references to an independent Kurdistan, a federation or the concept of "democratic autonomy" which has been proposed by Kurdish politicians, according to the report.

While there was cautious optimism regarding the prospect of negotiations in Ankara, violence continued in the southeast.

Fourteen PKK fighters and a Turkish soldier were killed overnight after a group of militants, located in northern Iraq some 8 km (5 miles) from the border, opened fire on a military outpost, the local governor's office said.

Since the PKK took up arms in 1984 violence has been focused in Turkey's mountainous southeast border region with Iran, Iraq and Syria but bomb attacks have also been staged in cities.

Talks with the PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Ocalan is widely reviled by Turks who hold him directly responsible for the bloodshed.

Many Turks rejoiced when Ocalan was hounded from a series of Middle East hideouts, denied refuge in Europe and finally tracked to Kenya by Turkish special forces in 1999.

Television footage at the time showed him strapped into the seat of a plane transporting him to Ankara, flanked by masked soldiers. After a televised trial, he was sentenced to death while crowds chanted "hang, hang, hang" outside the court.

Demirtas said Ocalan, held on the island of Imrali since his capture, had shown a determination to work towards peace but that progress would depend on the government.

His own party, which is popular in the mainly Kurdish southeast, should be involved in any talks, Demirtas added.

PKK DEMANDS ACCESS TO OCALAN

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has played down the concessions which Turkey would make to end the conflict, ruling out the prospect of Ocalan being released from Imrali and placed under house arrest or a general amnesty.

Erdogan is under pressure to stem the violence, Turkey's main domestic security concern, particularly with presidential elections due in 2014 in which he is expected to stand.

From his prison cell, Ocalan has not been able to express his views on the process directly as he has not had access to his lawyers for 16 months, although he has had a meeting with Kurdish politicians.

The main opposition CHP party expressed support for the process for the sake of ending the bloodshed but said parties in parliament needed to work together to achieve a solution.

The leader of the nationalist MHP was fierce in his criticism of the state talks with the "Imrali monster".

"Prime Minister Erdogan has crossed a threshold and dropped the government's anchor in the bloody port of separatist terror," the MHP's Devlet Bahceli told his deputies.

There was a cautious response from senior PKK commander Murat Karayilan in northern Iraq, who said the active PKK leadership must be given direct access to Ocalan himself.

"The (PKK) armed forces are what is fundamentally important. For that reason we must have direct dialogue with the leader," Karayilan said in an interview with a news agency close to the militants.

"There is the problem of convincing the broad command structure and fighters, not just the leadership," he said.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley, Gulsen Solaker and Seyhmus Cakan; Writing by Daren Butler and Jonathon Burch; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

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French budget minister faces tax fraud probe

PARIS (Reuters) - French prosecutors will open a preliminary investigation into Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac over allegations that he had a secret bank account in Switzerland, the Paris prosecutor's office said on Tuesday.

Cahuzac, who is leading a government crackdown on tax evasion, has vigorously denied a report by French investigative news website Mediapart that he held an undisclosed account at Swiss bank UBS until the start of 2010.

The prosecutor's office said it had no option but to open an inquiry immediately given the sensitivity of the allegations and the time it would take to investigate them.

"The Paris prosecutor has as a result decided to open a preliminary investigation for tax fraud," it said in a statement.

Mediapart followed up on its first report by publishing a recording of a telephone call from 2000 in which a male voice it said belonged to Cahuzac mentions an account he held at UBS.

Cahuzac has filed legal complaints against the website and repeated his denial of the allegations on France 2 television on Monday evening. He said the voice in the recording was not his.

(Reporting by John Irish, Sophie Louet and Jean-Baptiste Vey; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Tom Pfeiffer)

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India accuses Pakistan of killing soldiers in Kashmir

JAMMU, India (Reuters) - India accused old enemy Pakistan of sending troops across the heavily militarized line dividing the disputed region of Kashmir on Tuesday, and said two of its soldiers were killed and one wounded in a half-hour gunfight.

The body of one of the slain soldiers was found "badly mutilated" in a forested area of the Himalayan territory, said Rajesh K. Kalia, spokesman for the Indian army's Northern Command.

A Pakistani army spokesman denied what he said were Indian allegations of "unprovoked firing" across the Line of Control (LoC) between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

He branded India's allegations "propaganda" to divert attention away from a clash along the LoC two days earlier in which Pakistan had said one of its soldiers was killed after an Indian incursion. India denied its troops crossed the line.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since their independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

Firing and small skirmishes between the two countries are common along the LoC despite slowly improving ties in recent years. The Indian army says eight of its soldiers were killed in 2012, in 75 incidents.

Away from the border, ties seem to be better. Pakistan's cricket team completed a two-week tour of India on Sunday, the first time it has visited in five years.

Kalia said Tuesday's "intrusion" about 600 meters across the LoC in Mendhar - about 220 km (140 miles) north of the Indian city of Jammu - marked "a significant escalation ... of ceasefire violations and infiltration attempts supported by the Pakistan Army".

"Pakistan army troops, having taken advantage of thick fog and mist in the forested area, were moving towards (their) own posts when an alert area domination patrol spotted and engaged the intruders," he said.

"The firefight between Pakistan and own troops continued for approximately half an hour, after which the intruders retreated back towards their side of the Line of Control."

He said India would take up the issue with Pakistan at a military flag meeting and also at a diplomatic level.

In 1999, Pakistan-backed Islamist infiltrators occupied the Kargil heights in north of Indian Kashmir, and India lost hundreds of troops before re-occupying the mountains after bitter fighting that almost triggered a fourth war.

Indian military officials say the frequency of cross-border clashes has increased in recent weeks, with at least half a dozen ceasefire violations over the past week alone.

"I would say generally the picture has been a bit bleak," said Uday Bhaskar, an Indian military commentator and former director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, referring to relations between India and Pakistan.

"This incident only reiterates a certain pattern as far as the bilateral relationship is concerned."

He cited an apparent slowdown in Islamabad's commitment to granting India most-favored-nation trading status and a recent visit to India by an adviser to Pakistan's prime minister whose comments infuriated the Indian government.

(Writing by John Chalmers; Additional reporting by Matthias Williams; and by Katharine Houreld in Islamabad; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Guangdong chief offers deal in Chinese paper censorship row-source

GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - The Communist Party chief of Guangdong province stepped in to mediate a standoff over censorship at a Chinese newspaper on Tuesday, a source said, in a potentially encouraging sign for press freedoms in China.

The source close to the Guangdong Communist Party Committee said Hu Chunhua, a rising political star in China who just took over leadership of Guangdong province last month, had offered a solution to the dispute that led to some staff at the Southern Weekly going on strike.

The drama began late last week when reporters at the liberal paper accused censors of replacing a New Year letter to readers that called for a constitutional government with another piece lauding the party's achievements.

Under Hu's deal, the source said, newspaper workers would end their strike and return to work, the paper would print as normal this week, and most staff would not face punishment. "Guangdong's Hu personally stepped in to resolve this," the source said.

"He gets personal image points by showing that he has guts and the ability to resolve complex situations. In addition, the signal that he projects through this is one of relative openness, it's a signal of a leader who is relatively steady."

The standoff at the Southern Weekly, long seen as a beacon of independent and in-depth reporting in China's highly controlled media landscape, has led to demands for the country's new leadership to grant greater media freedoms.

The apparent concessions by authorities in the dispute could be seen as an indicator of new Communist Party leader Xi Jinping's reformist inclinations.

It wasn't possible to immediately corroborate Hu's involvement in brokering the deal with editorial staff, who may be bound by an agreement not to speak out.

"LENGTHEN LEASH ON PAPER"

Two sources close to Southern Weekly reporters, however, said journalists would be back at work tomorrow and that propaganda authorities had agreed in future to "lengthen their leash" on the paper. The sources said reporters regarded this as a victory for the Southern Weekly newsroom.

The paper's chief editor Huang Can would also be fired, the two sources and the source close to the Guangdong Communist Party Committee said.

Guangdong's propaganda chief Tuo Zhen, a chief protagonist in the standoff, has faced calls to quit by staff at the paper, activists and in an online petition.

The source close to the party committee said Hu had implied that Tuo would eventually be removed, but that he could not go immediately in order to save face.

"Of course he didn't say 'I guarantee it'. There's no need to say it, but he got the meaning across ... The meaning is that replacing him right now would not fly as far as face is concerned, but he cannot not be replaced and so he will be replaced at a more moderate time," he said.

A representative in the newspaper's distribution department told Reuters the paper would be published as normal this Thursday and that editorial staff would be back to work.

Earlier in the day, Chinese police broke up scuffles outside the gates of the paper in Guangzhou between leftist pro-government supporters and activists protesting against the Southern Weekly's press restrictions.

Despite the apparent concessions at the Southern Weekly, China still maintains tight media control as a political lever to contain dissent and preserve its one party rule.

Authorities shut the website of a leading pro-reform magazine last week, apparently because it had run an article calling for political reform and constitutional government. A former Reuters correspondent in China, Chris Buckley, who joined the New York Times last year, was also forced to leave the country after failing to obtain a visa.

(Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in Shanghai; Sui-Lee Wee and Fiona Li in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie and Pravin Char)

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Israeli ex-security chief sees risk of Palestinian uprising

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel faces the prospect of a new Palestinian uprising because of despair over the gridlock in peacemaking, a former head of the Israeli internal intelligence agency who is standing in the January 22 election said on Tuesday.

Yaakov Peri, running for the centrist Yesh Atid party, told Reuters in an interview that the next government must make peace negotiations with the Palestinians its foreign policy priority.

"Israel must do everything to come back to the negotiating table and find a compromise," he said, criticizing other leaders from across the political spectrum for playing down the issue.

The Israeli military has reported growing violence across the occupied West Bank in recent weeks, prompting warnings of a possible Intifada (uprising) after years of relative calm.

"Are we on the edge of a third Intifada? It is a real possibility because of the amount of despair coupled with the (political) stalemate," said Peri, who headed the Shin Bet security service from 1988 to 1994 - a time that coincided with the first Intifada.

Shin Bet is responsible for overseeing intelligence gathering in the Palestinian Territories and Peri warned that fundamentalist Islamist groups hostile to Israel would seize the initiative if there was no peace initiative.

He added that another Palestinian revolt need not be violent, but could evolve into a mass protest movement.

Peri's Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party is led by former television news anchor Yair Lapid. It is projected to win up to 10 seats in the 120-seat parliament and has not ruled out joining a coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

U.S.-brokered direct peace talks broke down in 2010 in a row over continued Jewish settlement building on land where the Palestinians want to establish their own independent state.

Mutual recrimination now reigns. Netanyahu says he sees no partner for peace and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel, with its settlement expansion, of destroying the so-called two-state solution.

Further complicating matters, the Palestinians are deeply split, with the Islamist group Hamas in sole charge of the Gaza Strip and opposed to a negotiated solution to the conflict.

GOOD FAITH NEEDED

However, Peri said he was certain a deal could still be reached, despite the fact that more than 500,000 Israeli settlers have put down roots in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which were seized by Israel in a 1967 war.

"It is doable, but not easy. I wouldn't say there is hatred, but a complete lack of faith. I think 50 or 60 percent of the issues are already agreed upon," he said.

Netanyahu has made security the focus of his election campaign, pledging to continue a settlement expansion programme that has drawn international criticism.

While he looks certain to win re-election, his electoral support has been eroded by the rising prominence of a far-right party led by Naftali Bennett - a former settler leader who wants to annex 60 percent of the West Bank.

Shelly Yachimovich, the leader of the main opposition, center-left Labour party, which was once synonymous with the peace movement in Israel, has tried to avoid the issue for fear of alienating the settler vote.

"The extreme right refuses to deal with the diplomatic issues at all and is hiding its head in the sand. Yachimovich is aiding and abetting the right without presenting the alternative," said Peri.

"The only solution is a return to the negotiating table."

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Heinrich)

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Netanyahu takes on the world in Israeli election campaign

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - It's Bibi against the world on a campaign trail that took the combative Israeli prime minister to a Jewish settlement on Tuesday.

Enjoying a wide opinion poll lead before a January 22 election, Benjamin Netanyahu has been lecturing the international community - vocal in its criticism of settlement expansion on occupied territory and his hints of military action against Iran - about what it should really be worried about.

The right-wing candidate, known by his childhood nickname "Bibi", has been striving in campaign appearances to strike a common chord in a country where a song titled, "The whole world is against us", was once a hit.

"The great danger to the world is not from Jews building in our ancestral capital in Jerusalem, it's from nuclear weapons in Iran," Netanyahu said on Monday in a speech in the holy city, to which both Israel and the Palestinians stake claims.

A day later, he travelled to Ariel, a major Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, where his government's granting of university status to a college last month drew international condemnation.

Tweaking his message to match the locality, Netanyahu said: "The danger to the world is not from the university in Ariel or Israeli construction in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The danger comes from Iran, which is building nuclear weapons."

Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful energy only.

Netanyahu has long been at odds with even Israel's closest Western allies over settlement building in the West Bank, territory captured in a 1967 war that Palestinians seek as part of a future state.

His tough talk on Iran, hinting heavily that Israel might attack its nuclear facilities unilaterally unless international sanctions persuade Tehran to halt uranium enrichment, has raised the alarm in world capitals.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

The civil war in nearby Syria and Israeli fears that Syrian chemical weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist rebels also figure high on Netanyahu's campaign list of eye-openers for foreign leaders.

"I call on the world to wake up. History will judge severely those who equate democratic Israel, which is establishing a university (in Ariel), to those tyrannical regimes slaughtering their countrymen and possessing weapons of mass destruction," he said during his visit to the settlement.

Running under the campaign slogan, "A strong prime minister, a strong Israel", Netanyahu's Likud party, allied in the election with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu faction, has lost some ground to a start-up far-right party led by high-tech millionaire Naftali Bennett.

But opinion polls still count Netanyahu as a shoo-in to enlist right-wing parties after the vote and form the next coalition government. In Israel, no single party has ever won a parliamentary majority.

Bennett, a former settler leader, opposes a Palestinian state and wants to annex about 60 percent of the West Bank.

Netanyahu is still formally committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a peace deal with Israel, while raising conditions - many of them already rejected by the Palestinians - for its creation.

But he has been making clear to voters that he intends to plough ahead with settlement construction, suggesting it is a sacred duty.

"We remain loyal to our homeland will continue to protect our citizens, develop our country and build in our land," Netanyahu said in Ariel.

"With God's help, we will build and we will succeed."

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Jailed Ethiopian journalist loses appeal over rebel ties

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - An Ethiopian journalist lost an appeal on Tuesday against a five-year prison sentence for her role in promoting subversive plots by a rebel group.

Reyot Alemu, a columnist at the now-defunct Feteh newspaper, and fellow journalist Woubishet Taye were found guilty a year ago of conspiring to participate in attacks under the orders of rebel groups and sentenced to 14 years behind bars. The pair were arrested in July 2011.

An appeals court reduced Reyot's sentence to five years in August and dropped two of the three charges to leave just the promotion of "terrorist activity".

A subsequent appeal to dismiss the case altogether, however, was rejected on Tuesday and she faces another three years and three months in prison, having already served more than 19 months.

Ethiopia has been accused by human rights watchdogs of clamping down on its media under the guise of national security, a charge the government denies.

Critics cite an anti-terrorism law passed after several bombings in 2009, with sentences of 10 to 20 years for anyone caught publishing information that could induce readers to take part in acts of terrorism.

Government officials deny targeting journalists because of their reporting or political affiliations.

Woubishet and Reyot were found to have links to Ginbot 7, one of five groups the government has banned as "terrorist" organizations.

Terrorism charges have not been limited to journalists - dozens of opposition politicians and supporters have been detained since last year, according to rights watchdogs.

The Horn of Africa country pardoned and released two Swedish journalists last year after previously sentencing them to 11 years on charges of assisting an outlawed rebel group.

Woubishet is still in prison and also seeking a pardon.

(Reporting by Aaron Maasho; Editing by George Obulutsa and Alison Williams)

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