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TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A Chinese warship dropped anchor off Tokyo on Wednesday for the communist nation's first military visit to Japan since World War II, in a highly symbolic display of improving ties between the two Asian giants.
The Chinese guided missile destroyer Shenzhen approaches a pier in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday.
The port call by the guided missile destroyer Shenzhen was part of a mutual exchange that will bring a Japanese warship on a visit to China at a later date. It was the first visit ever to Japan by Communist China's People's Liberation Army.
The Chinese ship arrived under heavy security with a Japanese destroyer as its escort and a half dozen helicopters buzzing the sky.
On board, a navy band played "Anchors Away," while a cheering section of Chinese well-wishers brought by bus by the embassy waved Chinese flags and performed a lion dance.
During its four-day stay, the Shenzhen will be opened to the Japanese public for tours. It will also dock at the Japanese naval headquarters in Yokosuka, just south of the capital, before returning to its home base in the southern Chinese port of Zhanjiang.
Diplomatic relations between Japan and China, two nations which are increasingly vying for economic and political clout in the region, have visibly improved over the past year.
Ties hit a low two years ago over territorial disputes and Japanese leaders' visits to a Tokyo war shrine, which many Chinese saw as inflammatory. But both sides have toned down their rhetoric and agreed to expand political and military exchanges.
China said before the Shenzhen departed for the trip that it hoped the call would "have a positive effect on the development of the relationship between the two countries and their defense departments."
Still, distrust between Beijing and Tokyo runs deep, particularly in military issues.
Japan's brutal invasion and occupation of much of China in the 1930s and 1940s have left a legacy of bitterness, one that Beijing has occasionally stoked to cater to nationalist sentiments.
Japanese officials, meanwhile, have repeatedly expressed concerns about China's surging military spending in recent years, calling for more transparency.
Japan and its top ally, the United States, are especially concerned with China's growing naval capabilities and its development of submarines that can operate farther away from China's shores for longer periods.
Washington, which has some 50,000 troops based in Japan, sees China's military growth as a potentially destabilizing factor in Asia.
Beijing last week deeply embarrassed the U.S. by refusing to allow the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier and its battle group entry into the port of Hong Kong.
The Kitty Hawk is home-ported in Japan.
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Hours after Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf cleared the final legal hurdle to being re-elected to a third five-year term, the 53-nation Commonwealth on Thursday suspended Pakistan from its group.
Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been under pressure to lift a state of emergency.
The Ministerial Action Group cited Musharraf's failure to lift the state of emergency he imposed earlier this month, step down as army chief and reinstate the country's constitution and its independent judiciary.
The suspension is "pending the restoration of democracy and the rule of law in that country," said the group, meeting in Kampala, Uganda.
The group noted that it had urged Pakistan 10 days ago to lift the state of emergency and take further steps, including the "full restoration of fundamental rights and the rule of law that have been curbed."
Calling the situation in Pakistan "a serious violation of the Commonwealth's fundamental political values," the group reiterated its call for Pakistan "to implement the necessary measures ... as soon as possible."
The suspension means Pakistan cannot participate in any of the councils or meetings of the Commonwealth, said Malta's foreign minister Michael Frendo, who chaired Thursday's meeting. In addition, no further Commonwealth programs will be carried out in Pakistan, although the group remains engaged with the nation, he told CNN.
The statement describes Pakistan as a "valued member of the Commonwealth."
Musharraf declared the state of emergency on November 3, suspended the constitution and fired the country's Supreme Court justices, stacking the court and interim cabinet with his allies.
Under the order, Pakistan's government banned independent television networks and forced at least two major TV stations to close completely, although some restrictions have been eased.
Thousands of people were also jailed or put under house arrest, including opposition leaders former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan, a former cricket star. Thousands have since been released, officials said Tuesday, including Bhutto and Khan.
Meanwhile, exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had tried to return from exile in September only to be deported, is poised to return to contest January elections, his party said on Thursday according to The Associated Press.
Sharif had reached "some deal" with authorities in Saudi Arabia, where he is in exile, to return to Pakistan, AP quoted Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party, as saying.
Earlier Thursday the Supreme Court sided with Musharraf on the final legal challenge to his candidacy, paving the way to his re-election.
Musharraf has pledged to step down as military chief before being sworn in again to rule as a civilian president.
The Commonwealth suspended Pakistan in October 1999 and reinstated it as a member in May 2004
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(CNN) -- Somalia's transitional government shut down the independent Shabelle Radio network Monday, amid a new push by government troops and their Ethiopian allies to put down an insurgency, network managers reported.
Angry demonstrators march through Mogadishu, Somalia, on Friday to denounce the Ethiopian presence.
Heavily armed troops entered the broadcaster's headquarters in Mogadishu about 11:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. ET) and forced it off the air, ordering journalists out the building, Shabelle Radio reported on it Web site. Soldiers briefly held the news director and acting manager, then released them.
"No reason has been said to the closure of Shabelle, but they claimed that is an order from senior government officials," the station reported.
The closure marks the eighth time Somali authorities shut down Shabelle, according to the network. It comes days after intense fighting between insurgents and the Ethiopian forces that drove them out of the war-torn capital last year.
About 100,000 people have fled Mogadishu since late October, joining more than 700,000 others displaced around the country, U.N. relief agencies estimate.
Residents, witnesses and journalists accuse Ethiopian and Somali troops of firing indiscriminately in revenge for attacks last week that left several troops dead. An Ethiopian soldier's body was dragged through the dusty streets of one neighborhood.
Between 60 and 80 people, many of them civilians, were killed in clashes between soldiers and insurgents last week. The troops seized control of Mogadishu's largest public market on Saturday.
Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia in December 2006 to drive out the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu and restore the U.N.-backed transitional government after a decade and a half of near-anarchy. In response, the Islamist extremists launched an insurgency against the Somali government and Ethiopian troops, who have made only "limited progress" against them, according to a U.N. report last week.
After the invasion, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi promised his troops would remain in Somalia only a few weeks, and he dismissed fears his army would become bogged down in a guerrilla war. But an African Union peacekeeping mission has never been fully manned, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned the Security Council last week that an Ethiopian withdrawal would be unlikely until conditions improve.
"Given the complex security situation in Somalia, it may be advisable to look at additional security options, including the deployment of a robust multinational force or coalition of the willing," the secretary-general's office wrote in a Security Council report. A small force "could be built to a level that would enable Ethiopian forces to commence a partial, then complete withdrawal from the country," he reported.
The United States has accused the ICU of harboring suspected al Qaeda figures, including three men wanted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and raised no objections to the invasion. Washington has long been concerned that Somalia could turn into a safe haven for terrorists, but ICU leaders deny harboring al Qaeda suspects
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DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) -- In a sign of the increasingly bitter feud between the leading Democratic presidential contenders, Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign Monday accused John Edwards of acting like President Bush and dividing Democrats.
A student says she was told what to ask during a Clinton event in Newton, Iowa.
On Saturday, Edwards, while campaigning in Iowa, criticized the Clinton camp for planting a question in the audience, saying the practice is "what George Bush does."
"George Bush goes to events that are staged, where people are screened, where they're only allowed to ask questions if the questions are favorable to George Bush and set up in his favor," the former senator from North Carolina said.
But it is Edwards who is acting more like the sitting Republican president, the Clinton camp says.
"What George Bush does is attack Democrats and divide the country," Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee said Monday. "Sen. Edwards' campaign resembles that more and more every day."
Edwards comments came after the Grinnell College's "Scarlet and Black" newspaper reported a student's account of being pulled aside before a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, and asked to pose a specific question.
"They were canned," Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff said in an interview with the newspaper. "One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask]."
Gallo-Chasanoff said she was told the campaign wanted the question, about what Clinton would do for the environment, to be asked by a college student. She said Clinton was prompted to call on her as well as another student seen in conversation with staffers before the event.
The Clinton camp acknowledges they suggested a student ask a certain question, but said Clinton did not know which questioners she was calling on during the event.
"It was news to me," Clinton told reporters, "and neither I nor my campaign approve of that, and it will certainly not be tolerated."
A second person has also come forward saying a Clinton staffer encouraged him to ask Clinton a question at an event in Iowa this spring.
"He asked me if I would ask Sen. Clinton about ways she was going to confront the president on the war in Iraq, specifically war funding," said Geoffrey Mitchell, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. "I told him it was not a question I felt comfortable with."
No questions were taken at the event. Elleithee said the staffer "bumped into someone he marginally knew" and during a conversation with Mitchell, "Iraq came up." Elleithee denied the campaign tried to plant him as a friendly questioner in the audience.
But Mitchell said he'd never met the Clinton staffer before that event.
Edwards was not the only rival for the Democratic presidential nomination to criticize Clinton. Obama also made a subtle dig at the front-runner while campaigning in New Hampshire Monday.
"I'll let Sen. Clinton answer for her campaign," Obama told reporters. "When I go into a town hall meeting, I never know what questions to expect and that's a good thing, because the people of New Hampshire should expect that their candidates are going to hear what's on the voters' minds and not what's been concocted by the candidate's staff."
After saying that he has sometimes received questions on the campaign trail that have stumped him, Obama said planting questions is "not a practice that we've ever engaged in and it's not a practice that we ever plan to engage in."
On Saturday, another candidate, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, said, "It's not a terribly wise thing to do."
Speaking at an event in Trident Technical College, in North Charleston, South Carolina, Monday, former President Clinton said his wife could take the criticism, The Associated Press reported.
"Even though those boys have been getting tough on her lately, she can handle it," Clinton said, according to the AP.
One Iowa political science professor said he doesn't believe planted questions are a big deal, but said they provide ammunition to opponents.
"This is just one more, essentially, distraction and one more piece of a general sort of raising of questions about her competence as a campaigner," said Steffen Schmidt of Iowa State University.
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