Australia PM Gillard woos 'kingmaker' MPs

SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard courted one of five minority lawmakers key to resolving the nation's political stalemate Saturday, as polling showed their voters favoured her rival.

Gillard held private talks with independent MP Andrew Wilkie, a former soldier and spy who resigned over Australia's role in the Iraq war, hoping to win his support for her to form government.

The prime minister and conservative rival Tony Abbott both failed to take a majority at last weekend's elections, resulting in the nation's first hung parliament in 70 years.

Both leaders are desperate to curry favour with Wilkie, Greens MP Adam Bandt and three rural independents in order to secure the 76 seats needed to take power, with Abbott holding 73 seats outright to Gillard's 72.

Wilkie said the talks had focused on the need for gambling law reform, an issue he is passionate about, while Gillard had stressed the strength of her ruling Labor party's position.

"She feels confident that she can form a government. She's very very keen to get the support of all the independents so she has a little bit of a buffer. She's very keen to get a resolution very quickly," Wilkie said.

Gillard did not answer questions as she left the meeting, telling reporters only that it had been a "good discussion".

The outspoken Wilkie famously blew the whistle on the lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and his 2003 revelations sparked a political storm.

He is widely regarded as the most unpredictable of the minority candidates, having warned that he may not side with either major party but he confirmed Saturday that he would not hold the country to ransom or force another election.

"The most important issue for me is the public interest and that we get very very quickly a stable, competent, ethical government," he said.

The talks came as polling showed the majority of voters who brought rural independents Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter to power wanted them to side with Abbott's Liberal/National coalition, not Gillard.

A Newspoll of 1,396 voters in the trio's electorates found more than 50 percent supported Abbott, compared with about 35 percent for Gillard.

Wilkie said the independents had an "important responsibility to the national interest" and should be looking beyond their own electorates.

"It's not about grandstanding, it's not about pork-barrelling, it's about quickly helping to stand up the next government of this country and making sure that it lasts the whole three years (of its term)," he said.

Formal negotiations are slated to start on September 3, after postal and provisional votes have been counted and the definitive result is known.

Fires threaten Russian nuclear site as smog returns

MOSCOW — Russia on Sunday reported success in reducing fires burning close to its main nuclear research centre but in Moscow shifting winds brought the acrid smell of smog back to the capital.

Amid the worst ever heatwave in its history, Russia has for days battled to cut back hundreds of blazes across the country, including flames in a nature reserve near its top nuclear research centre in Sarov, a town still closed to foreigners as in Soviet times.

The secret nuclear research centre tucked into the woods in central Russia straddles two regions -- the Nizhny Novgorod and Mordovia regions -- and the emergency ministry said on Sunday the number of fires in both regions had been reduced.

"Despite the continuing hot weather, man is prevailing over the wildfires. There has been a firm trend of cutting the number of wildfires in the region for the first time in the past days this week," the emergency ministry's Volga regional branch said in a statement.

The area of forest fires in the Nizhny Novgorod region has been significantly reduced over the past day, allowing officials to focus efforts on the fires in the state nature reserve close to the nuclear centre in Sarov, Mikhail Turkov, a spokesman for the ministry's Volga regional branch, told AFP.

At the same time, two fires were still burning in the village of Popovka and the village of Pushta in the nature reserve where more than 1,200 people and over 150 pieces of equipment were involved in extinguishing the flames.

The fire in Popovka still covers 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) but it has been partially contained and the area of the most active blaze covers just 30 hectares (75 acres), the ministry said.

The fire near the village of Pushta covering 200 hectares (500 acres) has been contained, the ministry said.

Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said he had personally inspected the area around Sarov and added there was no danger of nuclear explosions or other environmental threats even if the fire reached the territory of the centre.

The threat of the fire reaching the premises of the nuclear centre, which is surrounded by forests on all sides, was "very real" several days ago but the situation is now under control, he said on Friday in comments released by Rosatom on Saturday.

"The fire is constantly spreading from the Mordovia reserve and as long as it has not been put out, this risk for Sarov will remain."

"The threat of fire from the Mordovia natural reserve will only be fully eliminated once protracted rains have come. Until then, we'll have to be on high alert," Kiriyenko added.

"But it's already clear today that people are doing their best."

Across Russia there were 498 fires covering an area of 53,500 hectares (132,200 acres), down from 56,000 hectares (138,500 acres) the day before, a quarter of the area of almost 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) reported at the peak of the crisis.

Authorities managed to reduce an area of wildfires around Moscow by almost 25 hectares (62 acres) over the past day and there were seven burning peat bogs over an area of a mere eight hectares (20 acres), a Moscow-based emergency ministry spokeswoman, Yelena Chernova, told AFP.

But an acrid smell returned to Moscow as shifting winds brought back smog from the neighbouring Ryazan and Vladimir regions in central Russia where three major peat bogs were burning.

A spokesman for air pollution monitoring service Mosekomonitoring, Alexei Popikov, told AFP carbon monoxide levels in the Moscow air were 1.3 times higher than acceptable levels due to the smog.

Shifting winds are expected to clear the smoke later in the day, he said, as weather forecasters say the worst of the heatwave and smog might be over.

A week ago the noxious smoke had seeped into apartments, offices, stores and even underground into the Moscow metro forcing Russians to flee the debilitating combination of smog and high temperatures en masse.

Actress, agent set to challenge Campbell diamonds testimony

THE HAGUE — Supermodel Naomi Campbell's testimony at Charles Taylor's war crimes trial is likely to be challenged on Monday when a Hollywood film star and a modelling agent take the stand.

Both Mia Farrow and Carole White are liable to contradict Campbell when they take the stand at the "blood diamonds" trial of the former Liberian president at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague.

Court documents suggest that White will testify that Campbell knew in advance she would get diamonds from Taylor after a dinner in South Africa in 1997 -- and that she seemed disappointed with the "pebbles" she had received.

White recalled seeing two men at Campbell's room giving her "a scrubby piece of paper" containing about a half-dozen "small, greyish pebbles".

She will also testify that Campbell and Taylor were "mildly flirtatious" at the dinner -- an impression that Campbell denies -- and that she heard Taylor tell the 40-year-old supermodel that he was going to give her some diamonds.

White "heard Mr Taylor tell Ms Campbell that he was going to send her diamonds," according to notes of an interview that prosecutors conducted with White.

"It was arranged that he would send some men back with the gift."

According to White, the court documents added, Campbell "seemed excited about the diamonds and she kept talking about them".

Farrow, who also attended the dinner, has told prosecutors that Campbell had told her and other guests an "unforgettable story" the day after the event.

"She told us that she had been awakened in the night by knocking at her door, she opened the door to find two or three men, I do not recall how many, who presented her with a large diamond which they said was from Charles Taylor," says Farrow's statement.

Taylor, 62, is accused of receiving blood diamonds in return for arming rebels in Sierra Leone who murdered, raped and maimed civilians during a 1991-2001 civil war in the west African nation in which 120,000 died.

He denies the charges.

Prosecutors had subpoenaed Campbell in hopes of casting doubt on Taylor's credibility and to try to disprove his contention that he never possessed rough diamonds.

Campbell testified on Thursday that two unknown men had delivered to her room "dirty-looking stones" after a dinner she attended in South Africa, hosted by then president Nelson Mandela, at which she was seated next to Taylor.

"I saw a few stones in there. Very small, dirty-looking stones ... maybe three, two or three," she told the court.

At breakfast the next morning, she added, she told White -- founder of Premier Model Management in London and her agent at the time -- and Farrow about the gift, both of whom assumed the stones were diamonds.

"One of the two said 'that is obviously Charles Taylor' and I said 'yes I guess it was'," she told the court, adding that she later gave the stones to a representative of a Mandela charity.

Jeremy Ratcliffe, then head of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, who Campbell said she gave the "dirty-looking stones" to, announced Friday that he had turned them over to police in South Africa for authentication.

"They are real diamonds, handed back to us now, and the investigation begins," said Musa Zondi, spokesman for the special investigations unit of the South African police on Saturday.

On whether Campbell would be questioned, Zondi said: "It would depend on the information we have and the information we still need. There is no cut and dried (that) this will happen or won't happen."

Obama thinks it appropriate to recognize Hiroshima: Clinton

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that US President Barack Obama "thought it appropriate" to recognize Japan's atomic bomb anniversary as he wants to rid the world of nuclear arms.

The United States, 65 years after a mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima, will for the first time send an envoy this Friday to commemorate the bombing that rang in the nuclear age.

"President Obama is very committed to working toward a world without nuclear weapons," even if he sees it as a "long-term goal," Clinton told reporters when asked for comment on the anniversary.

"I think that the Obama administration and President Obama himself believe that it would be appropriate for us to recognize this anniversary and has proceeded to do so," she said.

The US ambassador to Japan, John Roos, is due to attend and lay a wreath "to express respect for all of the victims of World War II," the State Department said.

The United States has not apologized for the atomic bombs it dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which, surveys show, most Americans believe were necessary to bring a quick end to the war and avoid a land invasion that could have been more costly.