Abroad, only one thing matters: whether the US can be rid of the cantankerous chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, scourge of the UN, single-handed delayer of key ambassadorial appointments, and - not to put too fine a point on it - an unreconstructed xenophobe.On paper, this should be a tough year for a diehard conservative like Mr Helms. Here, it will be scrutinised as a pointer to racial and social attitudes in the old South. But for foreign-policymakers across the globe, the real question is another: can Mr Gantt this year succeed where he failed in 1990, and defeat Jesse Helms? Of the Senate contests this year, none will be watched beyond America's borders more closely than this one. Courtesy and charm personified, the former mayor of Charlotte is expounding on child tax-credits and kindergarten programmes, making his pitch to be elected Democratic Senator for North Carolina this November Mr Gantt happens to be black. Watch Harvey Gantt talk to a group of working mums at the Kidworks childcare centre here, and it's hard to imagine that the hopes of the world are on his shoulders.

From loudspeakers on both Shia and Sunni mosques, there were calls for people to get their weapons and prepare for a battle.Earlier this month, in a remote part of north-western Pakistan, a week- long battle left 100 people from both branches of the religion dead, many of them reportedly decapitated and left in mosques.. Shia Muslims, fearful of retaliation, were gathering in a nearby mosque, witnesses said. A separate Shia mosque was burned, but there were no injuries. The gunmen then fled.Afterwards, Multan's normally bustling streets were deserted as police and paramilitary soldiers patrolled in armoured troop carriers and Jeeps mounted with machine-guns.By mid-afternoon the army had been deployed.

Hospital officials said many of the dead were boys aged 10 to 16, from a religious school adjacent to the mosque.Witnesses said three black cars pulled up to the mosque, and several men with machine-guns leapt out and opened fire. They said two men on a motor-cycle shot Mumtaz-ul-Hassan, president of the local branch of the Shia Tehrik-i-Jafria Pakistan movement, while he was on his way to evening prayers. The killing appeared to have been a reprisal for the attack on the mosque in Multan, where gunmen burst in to the Majid Al-Khair mosque just after early-morning prayers All those killed were Sunni Muslims. Islamabad (Reuter) - Gunmen killed a leader of a militant Shia Muslim group in the Pakistani town of Bahawalpur yesterday hours after 21 Sunni Muslims died in a dawn attack on a mosque in the nearby city of Multan, Shia sources said. Majid Haji Ali, who said he had fought for 17 years, says: "If Barzani is ready to give human rights to everybody, we are crazy people to stay in the mountains." He did not look as if he expected to go home soon.. The PUK pesh merga insisted that although their families were in camps in Iran, they had to give up their guns if they crossed the frontier.The PUK pesh merga appeared baffled by their sudden retreat, but not demoralised. This was denied so repeatedly by the PUK pesh merga at Choman as to excite some suspicion. The village straddles the Iran-Iraq border and one villager was fording the river to visit the Iranian half of Choman, where an Iranian army tent was visible.

Abdullah Hussein Aziz, a shepherd, said: "The PUK still have a lot of men. Do you think they will do nothing?"In this vacuum the pesh merga of the PUK will be almost impossible to repress. But to make a real comeback the PUK will have to persuade the Kurds that Mr Barzani's alliance with Saddam Hussein during the war marks the return of Iraqi rule.Abdullah Hussein, the shepherd we met, said: "We are scared that the Iraqis took Arbil and the UN did nothing." A young pesh merga to whom we gave a lift said he had joined the PUK the previous week, "because when I heard of the deal with Iraq I became angry".The KDP portrays the PUK as the catspaw of Iran. In the isolated villages of eastern Sulaymaniyah province, a stronghold of Mr Talabani, people said they expected more fighting. The PUK suffered few casualties because of the speed of its retreat and still has many partisans. He can only do something if Iranians support him and use their long-range artillery."But the 3.5 million Kurds in northern Iraq still do not know whether the Kurdish civil war, which raged for two years, is over. Sami Abd al Rahman, the KDP spokesman, said: "Talabani has only 2,000 men with him.