Exclusive: Spokesman for Islamist group says it will not stop deadly attacks until country is ruled according to dictates of AllahThe Islamist group Boko Haram, which has killed almost 1,000 people in Nigeria, will continue its campaign of violence until the country is ruled by sharia law, a senior member has told the Guardian."We will consider negotiation only when we have brought the government to their knees," the spokesman, Abu Qaqa, said in the group's first major interview with a western newspaper. "Once we see that things are being done according to the dictates of Allah, and our members are released [from prison], we will only put aside our arms - but we will not lay them down. You don't put down your arms in Islam, you only put them aside."Qaqa, whose name is a pseudonym, said the group's members were spiritual followers of al-Qaida, and claimed they had met senior figures in the network founded by Osama bin Laden during visits to Saudia Arabia.The interview comes a week after Boko Haram claimed responsibility for Nigeria's single deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 186 people in the northern city of Kano.In an audio message posted on YouTube on Friday, the group's current leader, Abubakar Shekau, threatened to bomb schools and kidnap family members of government officials."If [security forces] are going to places of worship and destroying them, like mosques and Quranic schools, you have primary schools as well, you have secondary schools and universities, and we will start bombing them."Shekau rejected calls for a negotiated peace from President Goodluck Jonathan, who on Thursday called for the shadowy sect to step out of the shadows and engage in dialogue.Nigerian officials have voiced hopes for a negotiated settlement with "moderate elements" of the group. "Under the circumstances, if you look hard enough, you can find moderate elements you can communicate with," General Andrew Azazi, the national security adviser to the president, told the Wall Street Journal on Friday.Western diplomats say Boko Haram has splintered and the hardliners leading the factions responsible for the wave of violence that has killed some 250 people this year appear to have rejected any suggestion of dialogue.The Guardian was able to contact Abu Qaqa through an intermediary from the group's home state. The go-between has been in contact with the group since its inception, and met with its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, several times before he was killed in 2009. For most of the interview he used a voice modulator, but local journalists confirmed that his undisguised voice matched recordings of previous interviews.Qaqa said Shekau and others had travelled to Saudi Arabia for training and funding. "Al-Qaida are our elder brothers. During the lesser Hajj [last August], our leader travelled to Saudi Arabia and met al-Qaida there. We enjoy financial and technical support from them. Anything we want from them we ask them."He said recruits from neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger had joined the group. A recent UN report said weapons from Libya may have been smuggled to Boko Haram and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb via Chad, Niger and Nigeria.Security officials and diplomats in Abuja said they had no evidence of a link with al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, but an official confirmed that "elements of Boko Haram have made contact with external groups". The extent and frequency of that contact was unknown, the official said.In the decade since it first appeared, Boko Haram has graduated from crude driveby attacks on beer parlours to bombing security buildings in the northern Muslim heartland. Its most audacious attack targeted the United Nations building in the capital, Abuja, killing 25 in August. In recent weeks, Christians institutions have increasingly come under fire. A Christmas Day bomb attack on a packed church just outside the capital claimed almost 40 lives.But Qaqa said the rights of the country's 70 million Christians, who represent half of Nigeria's population, "would be protected" under the group's envisioned Islamic state. "Even the prophet Mohammed lived with non-Muslims and he gave them their dues." But he said everyone must abide by sharia law: "There are no exceptions. Even if you are a Muslim and you don't abide by sharia, we will kill you. Even if you are my own father, we will kill you."Speaking fluent but non-native Hausa, the lingua franca across the Sahelian belt on the cusp of the Sahara desert, he said: "It's the secular state that is responsible for the woes we are seeing today. People should understand that we are not saying we have to rule Nigeria, but we have been motivated by the stark injustice in the land. People underrate us but we have our sights set on [bringing sharia to] the whole world, not just Nigeria."Sharia law is already in place across 12 states in the Muslim-majority north. Few believe the group's radical ideology has traction in Nigeria's mainly Christian south, which is also home to millions of Muslims and has so far been out of the group's reach.Raising his voice for the only time during the interview, Qaqa denied reports that some governors in northern Nigeria paid the group monthly allowances in exchange for immunity from attacks. "May God punish anyone that said so," he said, before adding that the group has popular support in the north."Poor people are tired of the injustice, people are crying for saviours and they know the messiahs are Boko Haram."People were singing songs in [northern cities] Kano and Kaduna saying: 'We want Boko Haram'," Qaqa said, describing how the group can blend into the communities in which it operates. "If the masses don't like us they would have exposed us by now. When Islam comes everyone would be happy," he said.Diplomats say Nigeria's security services are belatedly attempting to gain control of the situation, which was previously dismissed as an internal, northern squabble often fuelled by politicians with personal grievances."There is an ongoing review of all security agencies," the presidential aide Ken Wiwa said. "This is a relatively new phenomenon in Nigeria and the administration is working hard to improve its capacity to respond. There are various other initiatives which will be implemented but this is as much a political as a security issue."An official said Nigeria's central bank was involved in measures aimed at strangling the group's external funding sources, including speeding up a cashless economy.

As UN prepares to debate resolution on crisis, at least 100 are thought to have been killed in Homs since WednesdayThe head of the Arab League monitoring mission in Syria has said violence has risen significantly in the country in recent days, as the UN prepares to debate a resolution on the crisis next week.The flashpoint city of Homs has again been the focal point of clashes, which are thought to have killed at least 100 people since Wednesday. Activists in the besieged city reported a massacre had taken place at the hands of regime forces on Thursday.European and Arab states are frantically drafting a resolution aimed at ending the violence and seizing power from the president, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime had enjoyed absolute control over Syria until a sustained and increasingly violent challenge to its rule.However, a key member of the UN security council, Russia, said it would again use its veto to kill any resolution that calls for Assad to stand down. The stance of Moscow, a staunch ally of the Assad regime, appears to end any notion of a short-term solution to the crisis in Syria, where 10 months of violence has killed at least 6,000 people.The UN said on Friday that 384 children had died since the rebellion began last March. Escalating tensions have since pitted an increasingly armed and organised opposition against a loyalist military.In his most strident comments since the Arab League monitoring mission began in November, its chief, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, said: "The situation at present, in terms of violence, does not help prepare the atmosphere … to get all sides to sit at the negotiating table."He identified Hama, Homs and Idlib as key areas of concern. Parts of the capital, Damascus, are also becoming an active conflict zone, although regime forces remain in control of most of the city and death tolls during clashes are not as high.Western states have remained reluctant to characterise the increasing violence in Syria as a civil war. Neither Britain, France, nor the US has described the violence in Syria, which is increasingly destabilising the country and alarming the region, as anything more than a rebellion, or budding insurgency."As the UK, we don't believe it's a civil war at present," said a Foreign Office spokesman. "But the situation is clearly deteriorating steadily, which is why we are pressing for swift action at the UN in support of the Arab League."US legislators have also described the crisis in Syria in ominous tones, without being prepared to offer a clear descriptor. "It is pretty close to a civil war," said John Kerry, US Senate foreign relations chairman, this week.There is little debate in academic circles about whether the situation in Syria now meets the defined benchmarks of civil war. "By the coding rules typically used by political scientists and sociologists who study civil war, yes, the conflict in Syria almost surely qualifies," said Jim Fearon, Stanford University political scientist."A fairly typical first cut at a definition for civil war would be 'an armed conflict between organised groups fighting over power at the centre or in a region, that has killed at least 1,000 within one year, and at least 100 on both sides.'"Analysts contacted by the Guardian say the reluctance of governments who are condemning the Syrian regime to accept that the term civil war applies there is driven by three factors: domestic political considerations, a fear that the term would exacerbate the situation, and out of concern to avoid making a moral judgement that could legitimise either side."People use the definition in a morally loaded way," said Shashank Joshi, an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute in London. "It can propel sides into action. It has connotations about the actors involved. It's much better for [governments] if they can continue to call the other side rebels because you can then characterise the conflict as rebels versus a dictatorship."If you call it a civil war, it gives the [Syrian] government licence to treat it as a civil war. And that is a licence you don't want to give them. We need to recognise that there is still a peaceful process taking place alongside the violence. Western governments are still holding out some hope that they can make political gains without violence."In a potentially significant development, the secretary general of the Gulf Co-operation Council, which this week withdrew its monitors from the Arab League monitoring mission to Syria, will on Monday meet the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, at the organisation's headquarters.

Romney takes lead in polls but is accused of dishonesty and negative campaigning as Republican nomination battle heats upRepublican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is outspending his main rival Newt Gingrich by almost four to one in advertising in Florida, having spent a staggering $13.8m so far.ABC reported that Romney had spent $5.6m and his super-political action committees $8.2m. Gingrich and his super-PAC has so far spent only $3.9m.On television stations from Jacksonville in the north to Key West in the south, as well as radio stations, negative ads about Gingrich are near unavoidable, paid for either directly by the Romney campaign or by the super-PACs supporting him. The television spots, popping up regularly between ads for carpets, weather-resistant paint and holidays, focus on Gingrich's tempestuous years as House Speaker and ends with a picture of him with Obama, saying "If Newt wins, this guy (Obama) will be very happy."The radio ad claim Gingrich has "more baggage than airlines".Gingrich ads by comparison seem sparse, with a ratio that feels closer to six in one. Gingrich describes himself in the ads as the "true conservative". In another ad, yet to be broadcast, he accuses Romney of lying five times in the CNN debate on Thursday in Jacksonville, Florida.Romney, clearly buoyed by his debate performance in which he showed a rare aggressive side to his personality and faced an unusually subdued Gingrich, made an oblique reference to his triumph during a campaign stop at Cape Canaveral, Florida, home of the US space industry. He said he had watched Barack Obama's State of the Union speech carefully "because I expect to debate him some day".A lot of voters have been backing Gingrich because they felt Romney was not strong enough to take on Obama in debate.In the Jacksonville debate, Romney described a Gingrich ad accusing him of being 'anti-immigrant" as repulsive.On Friday, Gingrich said the reason he was subdued was because he was shocked by Romney's "totally dishonest" comments throughout the debate. "I think it's the most blatantly dishonest performance by a presidential candidate I've ever seen," he said.One of the points the Gingrich team claim Romney lied about was that he had never voted for a Democrat but in fact in 1992 he was registered as an independent in Massachusetts and voted in the Democratic primary.A Quinnipiac university poll, taken before the debate, put Romney ahead by 9% in Florida, compared with only 2% two days ago. It put Romney on 38%, Gingrich 29%, Ron Paul 14% and Rick Santorum 12%.The space industry is a big issue in central Florida, with many companies dependent on it. Gingrich has promised to revitalise it and vowed that there would be a permanent US base on the moon by the end of his second term as president.Romney has been less forthcoming. At Cape Canaveral he said "a strong and vibrant space programme is part of being an exceptional nation".

Structuring time doesn't have to be about work. Make appointments to reconnect with something personally importantMost of us are painfully aware of, and sad about, how highly structured our time is. Anyone in employment or with children to look after knows just how many appointments litter the diary. The weeks are filled with engagements: finance meetings, tax inspections, deliveries, school plays and so on. When we imagine a better life, it tends to be one in which there are simply far fewer stretches of time devoted to any one thing in particular. The opposite of work is a category, relatively new in history, that we are calling "free time", a period cherished for the very fact that it contains no appointments whatsoever.What is striking about this arrangement is how much it differs from the vision of time put forward by all the major religions. They have always pictured free time differently. For them, there is nothing inherently wrong with having an appointment. It does not, by itself, spoil time. The key detail is that we should have an appointment with something important - which for them means something related to the needs of our souls. Here, in particular, religions differ from the secular world. Most people today picture an appointment as something they might have in an office with a few people around a table talking about a spreadsheet. It is working life, and the capitalist version of it, that dominates this thinking about appointments. For religious people, however, appointments are occasions when they can reconnect with the divine; something they feel the need to do  about as often as others think of watching the news.Religions have all established elaborate calendars that let no month, day or hour escape without administration of a precisely calibrated dose of ideas. For example, every evening at 10pm devout Roman Catholics must examine their consciences, read a psalm, declare In manus tuas, Domine ("Into your hands, Lord"), sing the Nunc dimittis from the second chapter of the Gospel of Saint Luke and conclude with a hymn to the mother of Jesus. Others have ... the news.The prestige of the news is founded on the assumption that our lives are forever poised on the verge of some critical transformation thanks to the two driving forces of modern history: politics and technology. We therefore have to catch up on new developments, for fear of being "left behind" and thus unable to function.For the religious, there is no need to harvest updates incrementally through news bulletins. What they see as the great stable truths can be written down on vellum or carved into stone rather than swilling malleably across handheld screens. For 1.6 billion Buddhists, there has been no news of world-altering significance since 483BC. For their Christian counterparts, the critical events of sacred history came to a close around Easter Sunday in 30AD, while for the Jewish sacred calendar, the line was drawn a little after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman general Titus, in 70AD.Even if we do not concur with the messages that religions schedule for us, we can still concede that it could be useful to structure not only our working lives, but also our emotional and psychological ones. Here, too, we might need a schedule, so we can bump into important concepts on more than just an ad hoc basis. It might be with Tolstoy rather than the Bible, but it should be a ritual nevertheless. Our appointments should not merely be related to money; our time should also include regular meetings with those ideas that sustain our souls.• Alain de Botton is a founder of The School of Life and author of best-selling books including Religion for Atheists (Hamish Hamilton). alaindebotton.com. To order Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton for £12.99 (RRP £18.99), visit guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.

French and Afghan presidents call for withdrawal of all Nato troops in 2013 - a year earlier than US goalThe French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said on Friday that France and Afghanistan have agreed to ask Nato to bring forward the handover of all combat operations to Afghan forces to 2013.Sarkozy also announced an accelerated exit for France, the fourth-largest contributor of troops in Afghanistan - marking a break from previous plans to adhere to the US goal of withdrawing combat forces by the end of 2014. The proposal comes a week after four unarmed French troops were killed by an Afghan soldier.Sarkozy, alongside Afghan president Hamid Karzai who was in Paris for a previously planned visit, said France had told the US of its plan, and will present it at a meeting next week of Nato defence ministers in Brussels. He said he would call the US president, Barack Obama, about it on Saturday.The new idea floated by Sarkozy would accelerate a gradual drawdown of Nato troops that Obama has planned to see through until the end of 2014.Sarkozy said France will withdraw combat troops by the end of 2013, a reversal from his repeated commitment in recent months to stick with other allies on a US-led schedule.At the same time, he said France will restart its training missions of Afghan troops. After the shootings on 20 January, he suspended the training and joint French military patrols with Afghan forces.