He said that if the Palestinians appoint a prime minister with control of security, negotiations and other critical matters, Bush would release his formula for peace – even in the midst of war against Iraq.The official said Bush’s offer is not tied to the conflict with President Saddam Hussein, though he acknowledged that it comes shortly after the president argued in a speech that removing Saddam would pave way for Middle East peace.Tony Blair has been urging Washington to push Israel and the Palestinians to find a peaceful resolution. A strong US initiative on Israel could help assuage European doubts about US policy and help allies like Blair, who face strong domestic criticism for backing Bush against Iraq.. As America prepared to resume spy flights off North Korea yesterday, a senior US official warned that the secretive state could have not one, but two separate methods in place within months for the production of nuclear weapons. North Korea’s state-run Central Radio said recently: “We seek peace, but we will not beg for peace like a slave in the face of demands to disarm, fearing a war.”Mr Kelly reiterated Washington’s stance that to engage the North now would simply be to reward bad behaviour. America, he insisted, would not begin serious talks until Pyongyang committed to eliminating its military nuclear programme, halted weapons proliferation and improved its human rights performance.He added that “there is not the slightest sign” the North would do so.

Indeed, General Leon LaPorte, commander of the 37,000 US troops stationed close to South Korea’s border with the North, said he expected further provocations, more missile tests and new moves on the nuclear front.One of the only cheerful notes from Mr Kelly and General Laporte was that they did not expect the North to go as far as launching a war against the South, whose capital, Seoul, is 35 miles from the border where one million North Korean troops are massed. The Pentagon indicated yesterday that it was preparing to resume reconnaissance flights off North Korea’s coast, after its fighter jets intercepted an American aircraft equipped to monitor missile tests.Whether America planned to use fighter jets to escort the reconnaissance flights was not immediately clear, but officials said this week that was highly unlikely. Washington has always claimed the right to conduct aerial surveillance in international airspace without armed escorts.The confrontation started in earnest last October, when Mr Kelly was told on a visit to Pyongyang that the regime had been pursuing a clandestine enriched uranium programme for several years, and that it was pulling out of a 1994 agreement with America.Washington responded by suspending fuel shipments. In retaliation the North pulled out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, expelled United Nations weapons inspectors and may now reactivate the Yongbyon reactor. If so, America says, North Korea could be producing enough plutonium for one nuclear device a month.. At least 10 people, mostly women, were killed yesterday when a bomb exploded on a commuter train at a suburban station in Bombay, India’s commercial hub, in an attack that will stoke tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

This bomb, however, was much larger.The attack seems likely to exacerbate friction in the subcontinent as hard-line Hindu nationalists within the government have in the past linked Islamist bombings with Pakistan. It came as Indian and Pakistani troops spent four hours trading artillery fire across their disputed frontier in Kashmir yesterday, where four Indian soldiers and two civilians were reportedly killed in separate incidents.The bomb exploded at Mulund station in Bombay, at a time when commuters were returning from work. There were chaotic scenes as the rescue workers sought to help the dozens of injured out of the wreckage. Police said eight women were killed in the blast, which went off between a ladies-only first-class coach and a general compartment.It happened a day after the 10th anniversary of a wave of bombings in Bombay that killed more than 250. That blitz was retaliation for a bout of Hindu-Muslim bloodletting, in which many hundreds died, and which was triggered by the razing of a mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya in 1992 by Hindu militants; the latter have been campaigning for a temple to be erected on the site ever since, guaranteeing that the issue remains volatile.Several blasts have rocked the city since late last year. In early December, two people were killed and 31 wounded when an explosion ripped off the rear of a bus. Another blast several days later in a food court housing a McDonald’s fast-food outlet injured 23.

In January, 30 people were wounded when a crude bomb exploded in a crowded street in a Bombay suburb.. Kamran Shafi is truly cosmopolitan. A former army major, he has worked as a businessman in Japan and as a diplomat in London, where he met – and liked – Tony Blair

Kamran Shafi is truly cosmopolitan. He was among 200,000 Pakistanis at an anti-war demonstration organised by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) an Islamist religious bloc dominated by people with virulently anti-Western and pro-Taliban views.The gap between Mr Shafi and Pakistan’s religious hardliners could hardly be greater He “cannot stand” them. He has excoriated them in print for luring thousands of impoverished Pakistani youths into fighting a “jihad” against America in Afghanistan.