Five accused of rape in India appear in court for charges

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Five men accused of the rape and murder of an Indian student appeared in court on Monday to hear charges against them after two of them offered evidence possibly in return for a lighter sentence in the case that has provoked widespread anger.

The five men, along with a teenager, are accused of raping the 23-year-old physiotherapy student after she boarded their bus on the way home from a movie in New Delhi on December 16. She died two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.

The attack on the student has ignited protests against the government and anger towards the police for their perceived failure to protect women. It has also provoked a rare national debate about rising violence against women.

A police guard said the men had their faces covered when they entered the courtroom, which had been closed to the public minutes earlier.

The five had already been charged with murder, rape and abduction along with other offences and the magistrate gave them copies of the charges, a prosecutor in the case told Reuters.

The court has yet to assign them defense lawyers or legal aid, said public prosecutor Rajiv Mohan. Most lawyers are unwilling to defend them because of the brutality of the crime.

Reuters video images showed the men stepping out of a blue police van that brought them from Tihar jail, and walking through a metal detector into the South Delhi court, across the street from the cinema where the victim watched a film before boarding the bus with a male friend on December 16.

Following shouting and angry scenes in the packed court, the magistrate, Namrita Aggarwal, closed the hearing to the media and the public. The court was cleared and police were posted at its doors before the accused were brought in.

"Keeping in view the sensitivity of this case that has risen, the proceedings including the inquiry and trial are to be held in camera," Aggarwal said, before ordering people not connected with the case out of the courtroom.

Aggarwal said the next hearing would be on January 10. She did not say when the case would go to trial in a separate, fast-track court, set up after the attack on the woman.

Two of the accused, Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta, moved an application on Saturday requesting they be made "approvers", or informers, against the other accused, Mukesh Kumar, Ram Singh and Akshay Thakura, prosecutor Mohan said.

Mohan said he was seeking the death sentence given the "heinous" crime.

"The five accused persons deserve not less than the death penalty," he said, echoing public sentiment and calls from the victim's family.

Most members of the bar association in Saket district, where the case is being heard, have vowed not to represent the accused.

GROUNDS FOR APPEAL?

But on Monday, lawyers Manohar Lal Sharma and V. K. Anand stood up to offer representation to the men. They were heckled by other lawyers who said the accused did not deserve representation.

"We are living in a modern society. We all are educated. Every accused, including those in brutal offences like this, has the legal right to represent his or her case to defend themselves," Lal Sharma said.

The court asked Anand to get the approval of the accused to represent them. If the men, most of them from a slum neighborhood, cannot arrange their own lawyers, the court will offer them legal aid before the trial begins.

Police have conducted extensive interrogations and say they have recorded confessions, even though the five have no lawyers.

Legal experts say their lack of representation could give grounds for appeal should they be found guilty. Similar cases have resulted in acquittals years after convictions.

Last week, chief justice Altamas Kabir inaugurated six fast-track courts to help reduce a backlog of sex crime cases in Delhi.

But some legal experts have warned that previous attempts to fast-track justice in India in some cases led to imperfect convictions that were later challenged.

The sixth member of the gang that lured the student and a male friend into the private bus is under 18 and will be tried in a separate juvenile court.

The government is aiming to lower the age teenagers can be tried as an adult, given widespread public anger that the boy will face a maximum three-year sentence.

The victim, who died on December 29 in hospital in Singapore, where she had been taken for treatment, was identified by a British newspaper on the weekend but Reuters has opted not to name her.

Indian law generally prohibits the identification of victims of sex crimes. The law is intended to protect victims' privacy and keep them from the media glare in a country where the social stigma associated with rape can be devastating.

But her father repeated on Monday his wish that she be identified and said he would be happy to release a photograph of her.

"We don't want to hide her identity, there is no reason for that. The only condition is it should not be misused," he told Reuters.

He said he was confident the trial would be quick and reiterated a call that those responsible be hanged.

(Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Boom expected in mobile app industry

SINGAPORE: The rising use of mobile applications has been a boon for the industry.

The mobile appplication industry recorded a 68 per cent rise in global sales last year, from US$8.5 billion to US$14.3 billion.

With the growing shipment of tablets and smartphones, experts say sales growth may increase by almost four times by 2017.

Cooliris, a photo sharing and browsing application, has become the top-ranked iPad app in 75 countries.

The application has been installed two million times and there have been 300 million photo views in the past five months.

It has also distinguished itself from over 700,000 applications available in app stores across the iPhone and Android operating system.

For the company that develops Cooliris, the installations have translated to growing revenue, and it expects this growth to continue into 2013.

Meanwhile, its downloads increased by 30 times since it launched a localised version of the app in China through an integration with China's social networking platform Renren last month.

With Asia constituting 30 per cent of Cooliris' downloads, the app developer has plans to grow its presence in markets like China and Japan.

"We do see a better trend in Asia compared to Europe, in terms of engagement and consumers using the application. The affinity for consumers in Asia towards photos has always been higher and we see that translated in the engagements with the app," said Soujanya Bhumkar, CEO of Cooliris.

"The consumers are much more open when it comes to trying new things and in terms of partnership, companies understand the velocity and momentum of a Silicon Valley based startup."

Experts say Asia is fast becoming an important market for mobile application developers.

"China makes up 50 per cent of all installed base of users in Asia when we look at the smartphone market. It's really Asia where the high growth of devices and the access to app stores and apps is coming from. Also currently, Asia is where people do have money to spend," said Rachel Lashford, managing director at Canalys.

The number of smartphone users in China is growing to over 300 million.

This growth momentum has prompted more industry players to focus on Asia to expand.

Jake Saunders from ABI Research said: "We see the Asia Pacific market being the fastest growing and this is just simply due to adoption rates of people adopting and upgrading their smartphones, growth in population so for total application downloads, we're looking at from 9 billion to 70 billion downloads in 2017."

Looking ahead, experts say start-up developers will find it harder to survive in the industry.

They will have to look for more creative ways to monetise their products and beat the growing competition from free downloads.

- CNA/xq

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Mamata ill, goes through files at home

KOLKATA: Perhaps for the first time since she took charge as Bengal's chief minister, Mamata Banerjee could not report to work at Writers' Buildings. The chief minister is unwell and has cancelled all her engagements for Monday and Tuesday. She is, however, sifting through files at her Harish Chatterjee Street home.

Sources in the chief minister's office at the state secretariat revealed that the chief minister had high temperature after she returned home from paying her last respects to actor Haradhan Bandopadhyay on Saturday. Much as she tried not to cancel her trip to Nadia and North 24-Parganas on Monday, doctors insisted that she take rest and stayed at home.

Therefore, her programmes for Monday and Tuesday were cancelled. The chief minister was supposed to convene a function in the city on Tuesday - it has been shifted to January 11. Mamata was scheduled to attend programmes at Amdanga in North 24-Parganas and Haringhata in Nadia.

Officials said she will attend all her programmes on January 9 and 10. The chief minister is supposed to visit Burdwan on Thursday (January 10) and has some meetings scheduled for Wednesday at the state secretariat.

Mamata is a known workaholic and has introduced attendance on Saturdays. Earlier, a whole lot of staff would be present at Writers' Buildings on Saturdays, but now only a handful of ministers, senior bureaucrats, including the chief secretary and the home secretary, report during the weekends. But Mamata has been zealous as ever and often convenes important meetings on Saturdays. Many of her meetings with central ministers have been convened over the weekend.

When she is not in Writers', the chief minister with the intention of taking "Writers' Buildings to the districts", have travelled all over Bengal with her team of ministers and bureaucrats. This is the first time she has cancelled her engagements because of illness. The other holidays taken by Mamata have been for her mother's death and a week for Kali Puja-Bhai Phonta.

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FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.

Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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Defiant Assad Vows to Hold Firm in Syria

President Bashar Assad called on Syrians to defend their country against religious extremists seeking to destroy the nation, dismissing any prospect of dialogue with the "murderous criminals" he says are behind the uprising even as he outlined his vision for a peaceful settlement to the civil war.

In a one-hour speech to the nation in which he appeared confident and relaxed, Assad struck a defiant tone, ignoring international demands for him to step down and saying he is ready to hold a dialogue but only with those "who have not betrayed Syria."

He offered a national reconciliation conference, elections and a new constitution but demanded regional and Western countries stop funding and arming rebels trying to overthrow him first.

Syria's opposition swiftly rejected the proposal. Those fighting to topple the regime, including rebels on the ground, have repeatedly said they will accept nothing less than the president's departure, dismissing any kind of settlement that leaves him in the picture.

"It is an excellent initiative that is only missing one crucial thing: His resignation," said Kamal Labwani, a veteran secular dissident and member of the opposition's Syrian National Coalition umbrella group.

"All what he is proposing will happen automatically, but only after he steps down," Lawani told The Associated Press by telephone from Sweden.

Remy de la Mauviniere/AP Photo

On top of that, Assad's new initiative is reminiscent of symbolic changes and concessions that his government made earlier in the uprising, which were rejected at the time as too little too late.

Speaking at the Opera House in central Damascus, Assad told the hall packed with supporters — who frequently broke out in cheers and applause — that "we are in a state of war."

"We are fighting an external aggression that is more dangerous than any others, because they use us to kill each other," he said. "It is a war between the nation and its enemies, between the people and the murderous criminals."

Assad has rarely spoken since the uprising against his rule began in March 2011, and Sunday's speech was his first since June. His last public comments came in an interview in November to Russian TV in which he vowed to die in Syria.

On Sunday, he seemed equally confident in his troops' ability to crush the rebels fighting his rule, even as they edge in closer than ever to his seat of power, Damascus.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Assad's speech was "beyond hypocritical." In a message posted on his official Twitter feed, Hague said "empty promises of reform fool no one."

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's office said in a statement that the bloc will "look carefully if there is anything new in the speech but we maintain our position that Assad has to step aside and allow for a political transition."

Wearing a suit and tie, Assad spoke before a collage of pictures of what appeared to be Syrians who have been killed since March 2011. At the end of his speech and as he was leaving the hall, he was mobbed by a group of loyalists shouting: "With our blood and souls we redeem you, Bashar!"

The president waved and blew kisses to the crowd on his way out.

Assad acknowledged the enormous impact of the conflict, which the United Nations recently estimated had killed more than 60,000 people.

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SJI International attains stellar grades in IB programme

SINGAPORE: St Joseph's Institution (SJI) International has reported its best results for the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme.

The school said 99 per cent from the class of 2012 passed the exam, attaining an average score of 36.2 points out of the maximum 45.

It added one in four students achieved 40 points.

The top student is Monica Layarda, who had a perfect score.

The first batch of of 58 IB students at SJI International completed the diploma in 2009.

In 2012, it had 137 students.

Principal Bradley Roberts said the students' outstanding results are due to the dedication of staff and the hard work of students.

"This particular batch of students included those who joined the school when it first opened its doors in January 2007. During this time, our average PSLE entry score has remained around 225. With this in mind, our results are truly extraordinary," Mr Roberts said.

- CNA/xq

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Indira Gandhi's assassins honoured by Akal Takht

AMRITSAR: The two killers of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi were honoured by Akal Takht on Sunday, the highest temporal seat of Sikh religion, on their 24th death anniversary amid presence of a local Akali leader.

Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh were hanged on January 6, 1989 after a trial for killing Gandhi in 1984.

Jathedar Gaini Gurbachan Singh presented a 'siropa' (robe of honour) to Tirlok Singh, father of Satwant Singh at a function organized by SGPC.

The 'Jathedar' also accorded them the status of 'martyrs of faith'.

SAD Amritsar president and former MP Simranjit Singh Mann and Dal Khalsa (a Sikh radical outfit) leader Kanwar Pal Singh were present at the occasion.

However, SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar was not present in the ceremony, in which no speech was delivered but Ardas (prayer) was offered in their memory.

Dal Khalsa leader Kanwar Pal Singh told reporters, "On this day, we pay rich tributes to them as they sacrificed their lives to avenge the sacrilege of Darbar Sahib and Akal Takht."

He said,"Sikhs feel proud of them and have full respect for their martyrdom."

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FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.

Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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Debt Limit Negotiating Tactic? No Negotiating

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden walk away from the podium after Obama made a statement regarding the passage of the fiscal cliff bill in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Analysis

New for 2013: In the Washington, D.C. fiscal wars we’ve gone from everything must be on the table to politicians declaring they won’t debate.

The fiscal cliff deal either averted disaster or compounded the problem, depending on who you ask. It certainly created new mini-cliffs in a few months as Congress and the president square off on the debt ceiling, spending cuts and government funding. But it also made sure the vast majority of Americans won’t see as big a tax hike as they might have.

President Obama was pretty clear late on New Year’s night as he reacted to Congress’s passage of a bill to take a turn away from the fiscal cliff. He won’t negotiate with Republicans about the debt ceiling.

“Now, one last point I want to make,” said the president, before wrapping up and hopping on Air Force One for a redeye to Hawaii. “While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed.”

(Read more here about the Fiscal Cliff)

That’s pretty clear. No debt ceiling negotiation. Then he added for emphasis: ”Let me repeat: We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred. If Congress refuses to give the United States government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic — far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff.”

But in Washington, saying you won’t do something these days has almost become like an opening bid. At least, that’s how Republicans are treating the president’s line in the sand.

“The president may not want to have a fight about government spending over the next few months, but it’s the fight he is going to have because it’s a debate the country needs,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, in an op-Ed on Yahoo! News about 36 hours later. “For the sake of our future, the president must show up to this debate early and convince his party to do something that neither he nor they have been willing to do until now.”

“We simply cannot increase the nation’s borrowing limit without committing to long overdue reforms to spending programs that are the very cause of our debt,” McConnell said.

The national debt is soon set to reach $16.4 trillion. That’s not a problem that can be solved with one bill or budget. And the two sides will have to figure out some sort of way to talk about entitlement/social safety net reform – meaning things like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – in addition to cutting spending and, most importantly, hope for an improving economy, to deal with those deficits.

House Speaker John Boehner, who has several times now failed to reach a big, broad fiscal deal with President Obama, told colleagues, according to The Hill newspaper, that he’s done with secret White House negotiations. He wants to stick with the constitutional way of doing things, with hearings and bills that are debated on Capitol Hill rather than hatched by the vice president and Senate Republicans.

Okay. Obama won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling. McConnell won’t not negotiate on the debt ceiling. Boehner doesn’t to do things by the book.

But McConnell won’t negotiate on taxes any more.

“Predictably,” McConnell had written earlier in his post, “the president is already claiming that his tax hike on the ‘rich’ isn’t enough. I have news for him: the moment that he and virtually every elected Democrat in Washington signed off on the terms of the current arrangement, it was the last word on taxes. That debate is over.”

It’s a new chapter in the ongoing fiscal saga in Washington. Back when the two sides were talking about a grand bargain or a big deal – some sort of all-inclusive reform that would right the listing deficit with one flip of the rudder – the popular trope was that “everything must be on the table.” That’s basically how Obama put it back in the summer of 2011 when he and Boehner failed to reach a grand bargain. He wanted higher taxes – they were calling them revenues back then. More recently, after Obama won the election and when he and Boehner were trying to hammer out another grand bargain to avert the fiscal cliff, Boehner wanted entitlements on the table. That means he wanted to find ways to curb future spending.

Both sides are declaring they won’t debate certain points, but this far – a full two months – before the mini-cliffs start, those are easier declarations to make than they will be when the government is in danger of defaulting or shutting down.

Even though they’re trying to take elements off the table, both men hope that coming negotiations can be a little more cordial and a little less down-to-the wire.

“Over the next two months they need to deliver the same kind of bipartisan resolution to the spending problem we have now achieved on revenue — before the 11th hour,” wrote McConnell.

“The one thing that I think, hopefully, in the New Year we’ll focus on is seeing if we can put a package like this together with a little bit less drama, a little less brinksmanship, not scare the heck out of folks quite as much,” said Obama.

That’ll be tough if neither side will talk about what the other side wants to talk about.

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Chavez swearing-in can be delayed: Venezuelan VP

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez's formal swearing-in for a new six-year term scheduled for January 10 can be postponed if he is unable to attend due to his battle to recover from cancer surgery, Venezuela's vice president said on Friday.

Nicolas Maduro's comments were the clearest indication yet that the Venezuelan government is preparing to delay the swearing-in while avoiding naming a replacement for Chavez or calling a new election in the South American OPEC nation.

In power since 1999, the 58-year-old socialist leader has not been seen in public for more than three weeks. Allies say he is in delicate condition after a fourth operation in two years for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area.

The political opposition argues that Chavez's presence on January 10 in Cuba - where there are rumors he may be dying - is tantamount to the president's stepping down.

But Maduro, waving a copy of the constitution during an interview with state TV, said there was no problem if Chavez was sworn in at a later date by the nation's top court.

"The interpretation being given is that the 2013-2019 constitutional period starts on January 10. In the case of President Chavez, he is a re-elected president and continues in his functions," he said.

"The formality of his swearing-in can be resolved in the Supreme Court at the time the court deems appropriate in coordination with the head of state."

In the increasing "Kremlinology"-style analysis of Venezuela's extraordinary political situation, that could be interpreted in different ways: that Maduro and other allies trust Chavez will recover eventually, or that they are buying time to cement succession plans before going into an election.

Despite his serious medical condition, there was no reason to declare Chavez's "complete absence" from office, Maduro said. Such a declaration would trigger a new vote within 30 days, according to Venezuela's charter.

RECOVERY POSSIBLE?

Chavez was conscious and fighting to recover, said Maduro, who traveled to Havana to see his boss this week.

"We will have the Commander well again," he said.

Maduro, 50, whom Chavez named as his preferred successor should he be forced to leave office, said Venezuela's opposition had no right to go against the will of the people as expressed in the October 7 vote to re-elect the president.

"The president right now is president ... Don't mess with the people. Respect democracy."

Despite insisting Chavez remains president and there is hope for recovery, the government has acknowledged the gravity of his condition, saying he is having trouble breathing due to a "severe" respiratory infection.

Social networks are abuzz with rumors he is on life support or facing uncontrollable metastasis of his cancer.

Chavez's abrupt exit from the political scene would be a huge shock for Venezuela. His oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor, while critics call him a dictator seeking to impose Cuban-style communism on Venezuelans.

Should Chavez leave office, a new election is likely to pitch former bus driver and union activist Maduro against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.

Capriles lost to Chavez in the October presidential election, but won an impressive 44 percent of the vote. Though past polls have shown him to be more popular than all of Chavez's allies, the equation is now different given Maduro has received the president's personal blessing - a factor likely to fire up Chavez's fanatical supporters.

His condition is being watched closely by Latin American allies that have benefited from his help, as well as investors attracted by Venezuela's lucrative and widely traded debt.

"The odds are growing that the country will soon undergo a possibly tumultuous transition," the U.S.-based think tank Stratfor said this week.

(Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga; editing by Christopher Wilson)

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