US Vice-President Joe Biden has again condemned Israel over a controversial building project, saying its approval undermined trust in the peace process.

Mr Biden was speaking after meeting the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank.

Mr Abbas also said the approval of another 1,600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem threatened the peace process and demanded the plans be scrapped.

Israel has insisted the move had nothing to do with Mr Biden’s visit.

‘Lasting peace’

Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to hold indirect “proximity talks” in a bid to restart the peace process, which has been stalled for 17 months.

However, the Israeli settlement announcement has cast a shadow on those talks, with the Palestinian Authority saying the approval showed Israel believed US negotiation efforts had failed before they had even begun.

Mr Biden told a joint press conference with Mr Abbas that he would condemn all statements that inflamed the situation or prejudiced the peace process.

He said the US would play an active and sustained role in the talks process and warned that it was “incumbent on both sides not to complicate the process”.

“Yesterday, the decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust - the trust that we need right now in order to begin as well as produce profitable negotiations.”

Mr Biden said achieving peace would require both Israel and the Palestinians to take “historically bold” steps.

Mr Abbas said he was addressing the Israeli people in saying that the “time is right for peace based on two states - an Israeli state living in peace and security alongside a Palestinian state”.

He said there should be a “permanent, lasting and just peace” that took in all areas, including Syria and Lebanon.

But he was also highly critical of the planning decision, saying it represented “the ruining of trust and a serious blow” to peace efforts.

Mr Abbas has refused to resume direct negotiations with the Israeli government because of its refusal to put a complete stop to the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israeli denial

In November, Israel announced a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank, under heavy US pressure. But it considers areas within the Jerusalem municipality as its territory and the restrictions do not apply.

Close to 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

During their dinner on Tuesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Mr Biden that he had no prior knowledge of the decision to authorise the new housing units in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Ramat Shlomo, officials said.

He said the plans had been submitted three years ago and had only received initial approval that day.

“The district committees approve plans weekly without informing me,” Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the chairman of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, told Israel Radio on Wednesday morning.

“If I’d have known, I would have postponed the authorisation by a week or two since we had no intention of provoking anyone.”

But the US government has not accepted Israel’s explanation that the announcement was essentially part of a bureaucratic process that had no connection with Mr Biden’s visit, says BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen in Jerusalem.

Israel, deliberately or not, inflicted something close to a humiliation on the Obama administration and the words they chose in reaction reflected that, our correspondent says.

The Arab League was due to meet in Cairo to decide on a response.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev insisted Israel had “a very good working relationship and a very good personal relationship” with the US.

He dismissed speculation that the interior ministry’s announcement was a deliberate move by some members of Mr Netanyahu’s cabinet to scupper any chance of peace talks.

The US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, is scheduled to arrive in the region next week to conduct the second round of proximity talks.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused the US of playing a “double game” in Afghanistan after the US used the same term to condemn Iran’s role.

Mr Ahmadinejad said the US had “created terrorists and now say they are fighting them”, as he appeared with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who is also in Kabul, has accused Iran of giving the Taliban low-level support.

Later, Mr Karzai flew to Pakistan for talks with another key neighbour.

This is Mr Ahmadinejad’s first visit to Afghanistan since both he and Mr Karzai were re-elected last year.

At a joint press conference with Mr Karzai, Mr Ahmadinejad rejected the presence of foreign military forces “as a solution for peace in Afghanistan”.

He said: “Our policy is full support for the Afghan people and Afghan government and reconstruction of Afghanistan.”

Mr Gates, who is in Afghanistan to review the progress of the current Western troop surge against the Taliban, had earlier accused Tehran of “playing a double game” of offering friendship to the Afghan government while at the same time giving “low-level support” and money to the Taliban.

The Taliban are Sunni Muslims and sworn enemies of Shia Iran, which has growing interests and influence, particularly in western parts of Afghanistan.

Mr Ahmadinejad said it was the US that was playing the “double game”.

“They themselves created terrorists and now they’re saying that they are fighting terrorists,” he said.

Mr Ahmadinejad criticised the US for its troops’ presence, saying: “Your country is located on the other side of the world, so what are you doing here?”

Mr Ahmadinejad said that terrorism could not be defeated by armies, only by intelligence.

‘Bothersome’

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says that President Karzai said little at the joint conference, but thanked President Ahmadinejad for his support and described Iran as a realistic friend.

Mr Karzai said: “We are very hopeful that our brother nation of Iran will work with us in bringing peace and security to Afghanistan so that both our countries will be secure.”

Mr Karzai will later head to Pakistan for key talks

Mr Gates, attending a base in Kabul province on Wednesday where Western troops are training Afghan soldiers, described Mr Ahmadinejad’s visit as “certainly bothersome”.

He said the US wanted Afghanistan to have good relations with its neighbours but that those neighbours must treat Afghanistan fairly.

He also said US troops might begin to leave Afghanistan before the previously stated withdrawal start date of July 2011, depending on “conditions on the ground”.

However, he added: “We should not be too impatient.

“At the end of the day, only Afghans will be able to provide long-term security for Afghanistan.”

Mr Karzai later travelled to Pakistan, which has been accused in the past of providing a haven to the Afghan Taliban.

However, it has recently stepped up its drive to arrest Taliban leaders, including alleged second-in-command Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says Mr Karzai will want the leaders extradited, while Pakistan will argue for more involvement in regional strategy, particularly if Western troops do start to leave Afghanistan.

Later on Wednesday, Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband is expected to deliver a speech in the US, urging President Karzai to do more to find a political solution to the conflict with the Taliban.

The military effort alone will not be enough to resolve the conflict, he is expected to say, and Afghanistan’s neighbours will need to play a central role in securing peace in the country.

‘They have forgotten that there are victims in Santiago as well’

The inside of Cecilia Painaqueo’s apartment in Santiago. Painaqueo and her four children have been camping outside.

SANTIAGO, Chile - From outside, there is no sign that the century-old building where Cecilia Painaqueo lived with her four children was damaged by one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. But inside her second-floor apartment, the bedroom walls collapsed and the wooden ceiling buckled.

Ms. Painaqueo, eight and a half months pregnant, said there were a lot of so-called casas de mentira, or houses that lie, in her central city neighborhood.

“You don’t see the damage by standing on the street,” she said. “You have to go inside.”

In many ways, her words sum up the state of Chile’s elegant, orderly capital 10 days after it was shaken by the 8.8-magnitude earthquake. While so much of the southern parts of this country lie in ruins, this city of high-rises and tree-lined boulevards appears mostly unscathed, a tribute, many say, to its strict building codes.

But many people in this city of 3.3 million still do not know if their lives will ever be the same. The worse off tend to be those left out of this country’s economic growth. They have also so far been left out of the government’s disaster relief efforts, focused mainly in the south.

Unsightly and unsafe camps, primarily occupied by Peruvian immigrants, have sprouted across the city’s historic center. In poor neighborhoods on the northern outskirts of the capital, thousands of people are still waiting for schools to reopen and basic services to be restored.

Gap between rich and poor
The poor are not the only ones living in limbo. Thousands of middle class families, without insurance or savings, have been forced to move in with friends and relatives after the quake left their shoddily built condominiums uninhabitable.

Ms. Painaqueo, a 36-year-old dishwasher, was forced to move her children — ages 17, 8, 7, and 15 months — and everything she could salvage from her apartment onto the sidewalk in front of her precarious building, still standing but not stable.

Neighbors lent her an umbrella to provide shade from the searing afternoon sunshine, and a tent to keep warm when the temperatures plunged at night.

High school students brought hot meals. And shopkeepers let her use their telephones and bathrooms.

Turkey’s prime minister says he has ordered architectural changes in an eastern region where 51 people were killed in an earthquake.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the high level of casualties on mud-brick buildings used in the area.

Survivors have been huddling around fires in near-freezing temperatures, as rescue teams hand out food.

The 6.0-magnitude quake struck before dawn on Monday, toppling buildings in five villages.

The destruction was said to be worst in the Kurdish village of Okcular, where at least 15 people were killed.

‘Lessons to learn’

“Unfortunately, houses made of sun-dried brick constitute the architecture in the region,” said Mr Erdogan.

“We have given necessary directives to the provincial authorities to change the architectural structure.”

Mr Erdogan also said he had ordered the start of a reconstruction project in the area.

He was speaking amid calls for Turkey to learn lessons from the quake, which commentators said would not have caused such a high toll in other earthquake-prone countries such as Japan.

“An earthquake with this magnitude should not usually cause any deaths, but mud-brick houses and other buildings that are not resistant to earthquakes can cause so much death and destruction,” earthquake expert Ahmet Mete Isikara told Turkey’s Hurryiet Daily News and Economic Review.

A commentary in the country’s Vatan newspaper said: “Those who rule the country… should prove to us through their actions that they have learnt their lessons from what happened.”

Residents of the affected villages have been warned not to return to damaged homes as the area was shaken by dozens of aftershocks, the strongest of which measured 5.5.

The government disaster management centre and Turkish Red Crescent have set up tents to help survivors cope with the harsh winter weather, and are also distributing food and blankets.

Turkey, which is crossed by the Northern and Eastern Anatolian fault lines, suffers from frequent earthquakes.

Many of them are minor, though a 7.4-magnitude tremor which hit the western city of Izmit in August 1999 killed more than 17,000 people.

The upper house of India’s parliament has approved a bill to reserve a third of all seats in the national parliament and state legislatures for women.

The bill was passed with 186 members of the 245-seat house voting in favour. Only one member voted against. Several smaller parties boycotted the vote.

The bill was introduced on Monday amid uproar from opponents, resulting in the suspension of seven MPs on Tuesday.

First proposed in 1996, the bill now has support from India’s main parties.

At present women make up just 10% of the lower house (Lok Sabha) of parliament, and significantly fewer in state assemblies.

Sonia Gandhi, Congress party president, has said she attaches the “highest importance” to the proposals and passing them would be a “gift to the women of India”.

This bill needed the support of two-thirds of voters present in the upper house (Rajya Sabha) for it to be passed.

The proposals will be tabled in the lower house at a later date. An overwhelming majority there support the move, correspondents say.

The bill has the support of the governing Congress-led UPA alliance, the BJP-led NDA alliance and left-wing parties.

‘Shameful’

But the bill’s passage through the upper house has been marked by scenes of chaos since it was tabled on Monday.

An opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitely, speaking in parliament on Tuesday, said the uproar was “one of the most shameful moments of India’s parliamentary democracy”.

Earlier, seven MPs had been forcibly removed from the upper house by security guards, after they refused to leave having been suspended for disorderly behaviour.

The MPs had shouted slogans, snatched papers from Vice President Hamid Ansari’s table, torn them and thrown them at him.

The MPs are all members of three parties opposing the women’s bill: the Samajwadi Party (SP), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Loktantric Janata Party (LJP).

While India’s main parties back the legislation, smaller socialist parties argue it will reduce representation of minorities and socially disadvantaged groups.

They want set quotas for women from Muslim and low-caste communities.

There are currently 59 women in the 545-member Lok Sabha. Under the proposals their numbers would rise to 181.

The composition of the 245-seat upper house, which at present has 21 women, will not be affected as its members are indirectly elected by state assemblies.

India already reserves a third of local governing council seats in towns and villages for women, a move that has significantly increased their role in decision-making.

Everything has been knocked down, there is not a stone in place’

Rescue workers and residents remove rubble from a destroyed house in Karakocan, Turkey, on Monday.

ANKARA, Turkey - A strong earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6, hit eastern Turkey on Monday, killing at least 57 people and knocking down houses in at least six villages, officials said.

The quake affected villages near the town of Kovancilar, toppling stone or mud-brick homes and minarets of mosques, officials and media reports said. The worst-hit area was the village of Okcular where some 17 people were reported killed and homes crumbled into piles of dirt.

The government’s crisis center said around 100 people were also injured in the quake, which occurred at 4:32 a.m. local time in Elazig province, about 340 miles east of Ankara, the capital.

It caught many people in their sleep. It was centered near the village of Basyurt, and was followed by more than 30 aftershocks, the strongest measuring 5.5, the Kandilli seismology center said.

Emergency workers were trying to rescue four people from debris, Gov. Muammer Erol said. CNN-Turk television said the dead included four young sisters trapped in the rubble.

“Everything has been knocked down, there is not a stone in place,” said Yadin Apaydin, administrator for the village of Yukari Kanatli, where he said at least three villagers died.

‘Totally flattened’
Authorities blocked access to Okcular village, to facilitate the entry and exit of ambulances and rescue teams on the village’s narrow roads. Relatives rushed to the village for news of their loved ones.

“The village is totally flattened,” Okcular’s administrator Hasan Demirdag told private NTV television.

The quake was felt in the neighboring provinces of Tunceli, Bingol and Diyarbakir where residents fled to the streets in panic and spent the night outdoors.

Some of the injuries occurred during the panic, when people jumped from windows or balconies. Dogan news agency footage showed people bringing in the injured to hospitals by cars and taxis.

Officials urged residents not to enter damaged homes, warning that they could topple from the aftershocks, which could last for days.

Television footage showed rescue workers and soldiers at Okcular lifting debris as villagers looked on. Rescuers could be seen digging into dirt and then removing an elderly man. The man had died and his body was quickly covered with a sheet.

Two women sat on mattresses wrapped in blankets. Turkey’s Red Crescent organization began setting up tents in the region.

Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, much of which lies on top of the North Anatolian fault. In 1999, two powerful earthquakes struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people.

In 2007, an earthquake measuring 5.7 damaged buildings in Elazig, briefly trapping a woman under debris. In 2003, an earthquake measuring 6.4 magnitude collapsed a school dormitory in the neighboring province of Bingol province, killing 83 children. The collapse was blamed on poor construction.

A strong earthquake has struck eastern Turkey, killing at least 57 people, officials have said.

The 6.0-magnitude quake, centred on the village of Basyurt in Elazig province, struck at 0432 (0232 GMT). It has been followed by more than 40 aftershocks.

Officials said the nearby village of Okcular had been almost destroyed and several others badly damaged.

A number of people were trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings, many of which were built of mud-bricks.

“Villages consisting mainly of mud-brick houses have been damaged, but we have minimal damage such as cracks in buildings made of cement or stone,” Elazig Governor Muammer Erol told CNN Turk.

At least 17 of the dead came from the hillside village of Okcular, where up to 30 houses collapsed, rescuers said.

“The village is totally flattened,” Okcular’s administrator, Hasan Demirdag, told NTV.

Television footage from Okcular showed rescue workers and soldiers digging among the rubble of collapsed buildings as villagers looked on.

Ali Riza Ferhat, a resident, said he had been asleep in his home when the earthquake struck.

“I tried to get out of the door but it wouldn’t open. I came out of the window and started helping my neighbours,” he told NTV. “We removed six bodies.”

The nearby villages of Yukari Kanatli, Kayalik, Gocmezler and Yukari Demirci were also badly damaged and each reported several deaths.

“Everything has been knocked down - there is not a stone in place,” Yadin Apaydin, the administrator for Yukari Kanatli, told CNN Turk.

At least 50 people have been taken to hospital, officials say. Some were reportedly hurt during the panic after the first earthquake, when they jumped from windows or balconies.

Residents of the affected villages have been warned not to return to damaged homes while the area continues to be hit by aftershocks, the strongest of which have so far measured 5.1 and 5.5.

The government disaster management centre and Turkish Red Crescent have set up tents to help survivors cope with the harsh winter weather, and are also distributing food and blankets.

Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek and three other ministers have travelled to the earthquake zone to provide assistance.

In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lamented the lack of earthquake-safe buildings and said he had ordered the start of a reconstruction project in the area.

“Mud-brick construction is undoubtedly a local tradition. But unfortunately, it has proved to have a heavy price,” he said.

A BBC News website reader who visited the village of Basyurt after the earthquake said its residents blamed the government for the destruction and loss of life.

“This is a seismic area. We’ve experienced so many earthquakes in the last 20 years, yet no measures have been taken to strengthen the buildings,” Volkan Durkal said.

“Most houses are not made with cement, they are not well-built and the people are not well-educated about what to do and where to take cover during an earthquake.”

Turkey is plagued by earthquakes - generally minor - because of its location on the North Anatolian fault line.

A 7.4-magnitude tremor which hit the western city of Izmit in August 1999 killed more than 17,000 people.

The BBC’s Jonathan Head in Istanbul says poor quality buildings were also blamed for the high death toll then and there is still concern in Turkey’s largest city, where seismologists predict a major earthquake will occur within the next few decades.