Xinhua Asia-Pacific News Summary at 0600 GMT, Feb. 5

Tony Abbott has reiterated that he is "very confident" he will remain as Australia's prime minister, despite increasing pressure to call for a leadership spill in the near future.

Earlier in the week, three federal government MPs publicly revealed that Abbott no longer had their support and called for a vote to decide the leadership problems as soon as next week's party room meeting.(Australia-PM-Confident)

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CANBERRA -- Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said the country has "left no stone unturned" in its failed attempts to rescue a pair of Australian drug smugglers from death row in Indonesia.

"I just want to assure people that the Australian government has left no stone unturned to try to ensure that these two Australians on death row have their sentences commuted," Abbott told reporters in Melbourne on Thursday.(Australia-Indonesia-Drug)

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NEW DELHI -- India's minority Christians Thursday held a protest over the recent spate of attacks on churches in the national capital, but were detained by police for holding the demonstrations without permission.(India-Christian-Protest)

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COLOMBO -- A rift emerged in Sri Lanka's main Tamil political party on Thursday after some of its members including the party leader had attended the national Independence Day anniversary celebrations for the first time in 43 years.

Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Leader, R. Sampanthan had attended the 67th Independence Day celebrations just outside Colombo on Wednesday on what was seen as a historic move aimed at supporting Sri Lanka's newly elected President Maithripala Sirisena's efforts to reconcile the Tamils and majority Sinhalese communities.(Sri Lanka-Tamil-Rift) Endi