ENGLISH DEYEA NEWS

Cruise missile strikes Gadhafi compound

2011-03-21T18:56:00.004+06:30

Burma tries to strangle Skype

2011-03-21T18:36:00.003+06:30

Internet voice calls are a precious lifeline in Burma. Naturally, the government wants to ban it.

Patrick Winn | If you think U.S. cell phone bills are extortionate, consider this: until recently, acquiring a mobile phone number in Burma meant forking over nearly $1,700 to a state-run telecom.

That's just for the SIM card, the chip inside your phone that stores your number. It's an absurd charge in a country with a $1,100 per capita GDP, one of the world's lowest.

This picture taken on August 23, 2010 shows a Myanmar (Burmese) man chatting online at an Internet cafe in Yangon. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images)

That would be like requiring someone in the U.S., where per capita GDP is $47,400, to spend more than $72,000 on a mobile phone number. (Now, for added effect, count how many cell phones you've lost.)

It's little wonder that Burmese fortunate enough to live near Internet cafes have discovered Skype and software like it such as Google Chat and Pfingo. Depending where you call, chatting through the Internet is somewhere between free (computer-to-computer) to about 25 cents a minute.

This is revolutionary in Burma, where a bleak economy and oppressive military have forced millions to live abroad. Though Burma's Internet infrastructure is pathetic, and its connection speeds sluggish, the Web is a crucial conduit linking Burmese on the inside to their friends and loved ones abroad. Even pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi uses Skype.

But Burma's military-controlled government wants to forbid Internet voice calls, according to this excellent report in Burma's exile media outlet, The Irrawaddy. At least one Web cafe owner inside Burma, reached by the Irrawaddy, says the ban will slash his revenue by up to 40 percent. Their report states that the junta has threatened cafes that offer Internet voice calls with "legal action" because it's "illegal under existing telecommunication laws."

Why does the junta want to snuff out service like Skype?

Money, for starters. These services deliver profit to foreign companies instead of the military government's telecom monopoly. Similar reasoning has triggered restrictions in countries from Belize to Oman.

Skype is also far more difficult to monitor than dedicated mobile numbers or land lines. That's a threat to the paranoid junta, which actively seeks out and crushes dissent.

According to the Irrawaddy, Burma's telecom agency has recently reduced the cost of a single SIM card to $560. Progress? Barely. In neighboring Thailand, competing telecoms recruit customers by handing out SIM cards for free. (I bought the SIM card and number I've used for years from a 7-11 for about $1.50.)

Hopefully the Skype ban won't stick in Burma's Internet cafes. Perhaps it will, snuffing out a smart, cheap and simple link between Burmese people and the outside world.

source by : globalpost.com

Myanmar's Suu Kyi says she won't vote in elections

2010-10-13T09:34:00.003+06:30

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | YANGON, Myanmar — Detained Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has decided not to vote in upcoming elections, even though authorities have told her she is on the electoral roll, her lawyer said Tuesday.

Khin Maung Win / AP

A member of the Wun Tha Nu National League for Democracy party hands out pamphlets to a local resident on a street during the party's election campaign on Monday in Yangon, Myanmar. The general elections scheduled for Nov. 7 are the first in 20 years.

Suu Kyi's lawyer, Nyan Win, said she informed him that she does not intend to vote in the Nov. 7 general elections in which her now-disbanded party has decided not to participate.

The military government dissolved her National League for Democracy party because it declined to reregister for an election it considers unfair and undemocratic. Nyan Win told reporters her position after meeting her for 2 1/2 hours at her home Tuesday.

She has previously advised followers that they have the right not to vote. The state-controlled press has criticized that position.

Suu Kyi told her lawyers that authorities informed her Sept. 24 that her name is on the electoral list and that she will be able to cast a ballot. She said that violated an election law that prohibited convicted people from voting.

According to the law, convicted people include those serving prison terms imposed by a court and those who are undergoing an appeal process, Nyan Win said.

Suu Kyi was convicted in August 2009 of violating the terms of her previous detention by briefly sheltering an American man who swam uninvited to her lakeside home. She is currently serving an 18-month term of house arrest that will expire Nov. 13, six days after the elections.

Suu Kyi "said the decision to put her on the electoral roll is against the law and this is lawlessness. She has instructed us to tell authorities that the decision was against the law," Nyan Win said.

Suu Kyi's name was not on an initial voting list, but was added to a supplementary list posted a few days later. It is not clear why it was added.

The elections will be Myanmar's first since 1990, when Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory. The junta ignored the results and has kept Suu Kyi jailed or under house arrest for 15 of the past 21 years.

Critics call the upcoming polls a sham designed to cement military rule. Myanmar has been under military control since 1962.

Despite criticism, Myanmar has rejected offers of help in carrying out the elections, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Tuesday.

Abhisit said he offered his country's assistance during a visit to Myanmar on Monday. He met Prime Minister Thein Sein and junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

Abhisit told reporters in Bangkok he conveyed the international community's concerns. Myanmar's leaders replied they were "aware of the concerns, but did not want any outside help," he said.

Myanmar lays down tough rules for upcoming polls

2010-08-20T09:15:00.006+06:30

MSNBC | YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar published Thursday stringent rules for November's general election that demand candidates seek permission a week in advance to campaign, do not make speeches that "tarnish" the ruling military or shout slogans at processions.

The disbanded party of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, dissolved for declining to register with the authorities, meanwhile officially declared its boycott of the upcoming polls.

The 13-point list of campaigning regulations decreed by the state Election Commission would guarantee a "free and fair" vote, according to the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper which published the rules a week after the Nov. 7 election date was set.

The vote will be the first in impoverished Myanmar in two decades. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won the last election in 1990 but was barred from taking power, say the junta unfairly imposed rules for this year's vote that restrict campaigning and bar the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and other political prisoners from participating.

The junta has billed the election is as the key transitional step from five decades of military rule to civilian government. Critics say a military-initiated constitution, along with repression of the opposition, ensures the army will continue to hold commanding influence even after the polls.

Many Western governments and human right groups agree that the process is unfair and seek changes to ensure free and fair polls, including the release of Suu Kyi — who has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years — and other prisoners.

According to the regulations, candidates must seek permission to campaign a week in advance from the local Election Commission, providing details such as place of assembly, date, time and duration. Holding flags and shouting slogans in processions is forbidden, as is making speeches or distributing publications that "tarnish the image" of the military and any "activities that can harm security."

Candidates found in violation of the regulations face a fine and a jail term of one year.

It was still unclear when the official campaign period begins. The Election Commission will finish its scrutiny of candidates by Sept. 10.

The NLD was officially disbanded earlier this year after it declined to register for the vote, though its leaders made clear they are keeping the organization together to continue its struggle for democracy. Party vice chairman Tin Oo on Thursday spelled out why the party was boycotting the election.

"We decided to officially boycott the election because we believe that the 2008 constitution and the electoral laws do not guarantee democracy and human rights in the country," said Tin Oo, contacted by phone after an emergency meeting of party leaders at his house.

"We have no interest in the election and we want to give a clear message to the voters that they have the right not to vote in the upcoming elections," he said.

There are no penalties for not voting.

Taken together, the NLD positions constitute a strong but apparently legal challenge to the legitimacy of the polls, especially in the absence of any unified opposition to the junta.

Separately, the New Light of Myanmar reported an ethnic Karen group allied to the government — the Democratic Karen Buddhist Association — agreed to transform its guerrilla fighters into the Border Guard Forces.

Integrating ethnic rebel groups into government-supervised border forces is a key part of the government's plans to pacify border areas, which are dominated by minority groups that have long striven for autonomy, sometimes though armed struggle.

The junta in the 1990s reached cease-fire agreements with many, but compromised by allowing them to keep their arms. Five of the groups have now agreed to integrate themselves into the national border force, but others, such as the Kachin Independence Army and the 20,000-strong United Wa State Army, are still resisting the transformation of their militias.

Burmese Army Captain Killed in Extortion Gunfight

2010-08-20T09:11:00.008+06:30

By LAWI WENG | A Burmese army captain was killed on Saturday when a gunfight broke out between two factions of soldiers that were trying to extort money from Thai fishermen in waters near Kawthaung Township in southern Burma.

Fishing Vessels at port of Kawthaung.
(Source: www.thailandmagic.com)

The exchange of gunfire happened when two separate groups of Burmese soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 267, based in Tavoy in Tenasserim Division, clashed while tackling Thai fishermen who were operating illegally in Burmese territorial waters.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Thursday, a Burmese fisherman in Kawthaung said that the captain was killed at 1 a.m. On Aug. 14 after an altercation between the two factions, which were from the same battalion. Apparently, the captain and his men attempted to prevent the other faction from extorting money from the fishermen who had been caught fishing illegally.

“They [the first faction] arrested the Thai fishermen and started demanding money,” the fisherman said. “They confiscated all manner of fishing equipment and threatened to detain the fishermen.”

“Then the other army faction arrived on the scene,” he said. “The captain and his soldiers ordered the other group to release the fishermen and their boat and equipment.” The first group refused and gunfire broke out, he said.

The source also said that the captain's group had previously extorted money from the fishermen and regularly patrolled the waters seeking to take bribes from Thai fishermen.

The source said that there are two or three groups of Burmese soldiers that routinely extort money from Thai fishing boats in the area. In general, he said, each fishing boat has to pay a bribe of 20,000 baht [US $633] and two tanks of gasoline every month if they are caught fishing in Burmese waters.

Many of the fishing boats can only afford to pay one faction of the Burmese army but not all, which means they can be arrested and harassed by the other factions at any time.

Kawthaung, located at Burma's far southern border, is one of the major border points where Burmese migrants cross over to Ranong to look for work in Thailand or to travel to Malaysia.

source by : Irrawaddy

UN set to appoint a war crimes commission against Myanmar

2010-08-20T08:59:00.001+06:30

The Times Of India | WASHINGTON: The United Nations is to set up a Commission of Inquiry into war crimes by the Myanmar's military rulers, a move which is being strongly backed by the Obama administration.

The move to set up Commission of Inquiry is part of an effort to force the military junta to open its authoritarian political system and free thousands of political prisoners, The Washington Post reported.

Quoting top US officials, the paper said this indicated a toughening of stance against the military junta led by Senior General Than Shwe, who has been ruling Myanmar uninterrupted since 1992.

The Obama administration is also considering tightening financial sanctions against the regime, and these developments come just months before the November 7 general elections announced by the Myanmar government, which has been rejected by US and other western nations as flawed.

The paper said the 77-year-old dictator has been accused of leading brutal campaigns against ethnic insurgencies and Burmese dissidents, such as the 2007 crackdown on the "Saffron Revolution", during which scores of protesters, including Buddhist monks, were killed and thousands jailed.

Than Shwe's State Peace and Development Council also overturned election results in 1990 that favoured the political party of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest.

"What's important here is that this is not aimed at the people of Burma but at its leadership, particularly at Than Shwe," said a senior administration official.

The Obama administration entered office with a desire to shift course on Burma -- both as part of a strategy to improve relations with all the nations of Southeast Asia and as part of a belief that Burma, also known as Myanmar, should not be allowed to become a client state of China, the Post said.

The administration decided last fall to begin to engage with the Burmese regime. It dispatched high-ranking diplomats and held out the prospect of the resumption of some aid.

It opened discussions about Burma's upcoming elections in the hope that the regime would allow some measure of democracy.

Asia Pacific Food Situation Update - July 2010

2010-08-20T08:48:00.002+06:30

RelifeWeb | Mekong region drought to affect 2010 Asian paddy harvest

Drought conditions in the greater Mekong region at the start of the planting season are expected to affect Asia's 2010 paddy harvest according to the latest FAO assessment which lowered earlier projections for the region by 6.1 million tonnes. Reductions are expected in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand as well as in the Philippines and China. However, Asia's 2010 paddy production, projected at 637.3 million tonnes (425.2 million tonnes on milled basis), would be some 23 million tonnes over that in the preceding year, led by gains in India, following the 2009 severe drought there, along with Bangladesh and Indonesia, among other countries. The 2010 global paddy harvest is projected at a record 704.4 million tonnes (470 milion tonnes on milled basis), driven by a 3 percent increase in plantings.

Full_Report (pdf* format - 800.5 Kbytes)

Tensions easing near China-Myanmar border

2010-08-20T08:43:00.005+06:30

BEIJING, China (CNN) | Some of the tens of thousands of refugees who fled to China to escape fighting in Myanmar are beginning to return home as tensions have eased, police said.

Refugees from Myanmar sit with their possessions at a camp in Zhenkang, in southwest China, on Sunday.

An estimated 37,000 people were displaced by the fighting, Meng Sutie, police chief in southern China's Yunnan Province, told China's state-run Xinhua news agency Sunday.

The exodus of residents along the border grew to a flood last week as Myanmar government troops battled ethnic minority groups and their armies in the country's northeast. The region has an estimated population of 150,000.

There were casualties on both sides of the border, according to Meng. Shells fired into Chinese territory killed one person and injured two others, while fighting in Myanmar killed a Chinese and wounded 13 more.
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In a rare criticism of Myanmar's ruling military junta, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Friday that China hoped Myanmar could properly solve its domestic issues and safeguard the stability of its border with China, Xinhua reported.

China has been providing emergency shelter, food and medical care for the refugees.

Obama offers no firm signals on troop increases

2009-10-07T08:59:00.002+06:30

Amid rising deaths in Afghanistan, president’s advisers are split on strategy

Afghan recruits take part in a training session.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday ruled out shrinking the Afghanistan war to a counterterrorism campaign. Yet he did not signal whether he is prepared to send any more troops to the war zone — either the 40,000 his top commander wants or a smaller buildup, according to several officials.

House and Senate leaders of both parties emerged from a nearly 90-minute conversation with Obama with praise for his candor and interest in listening. But politically speaking, all sides appeared to exit where they entered, with Republicans pushing Obama to follow his military commanders and Democrats saying he should not be rushed.

Obama is examining how to proceed with a worsening war that has claimed nearly 800 U.S. lives and sapped American patience. Launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to defeat Taliban insurgents and rid al-Qaida terrorists of a home base, the war has lasted longer than ever envisioned — eight years on Wednesday.

Obama said the war would not be reduced to a narrowly defined counterterrorism effort, with the withdrawal of many U.S. forces and an emphasis on special operations forces that target terrorists in the dangerous border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Two senior administration officials aides say such a scenario has been inaccurately characterized and linked to Vice President Joe Biden, and that Obama wanted to make clear he is considering no such plan.

No hints on troops increases
The president did not show his hand on troop increases. His top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has bluntly warned that more troops are needed to right the war, perhaps up to 40,000 more. Obama has already added 21,000 troops this year, raising the total to 68,000.

Obama may be considering a more modest building of troops — closer to 10,000 than 40,000 — according to Republican and Democratic congressional aides. But White House aides said no such decision has been made.

The president insisted that he will make a decision on troops after settling on the strategy ahead. He told lawmakers he will be deliberate yet show urgency.

"We do recognize that he has a tough decision, and he wants ample time to make a good decision," said House Republican leader John Boehner. "Frankly, I support that, but we need to remember that every day that goes by, the troops that we do have there are in greater danger."

What's clear is that the mission in Afghanistan is not changing. Obama said his focus is to keep al-Qaida terrorists from having a base from which to launch attacks on the U.S or it allies. He heard from 18 lawmakers and said he would keep seeking such input even knowing his final decision would not please them all.

While several lawmakers described the exchanges as helpful and open, a different view emerged about just how much backing the president will get.

"The one thing that I think was interesting is that everyone, Democrats and Republicans, said, 'Whatever decision you make, we'll support it,' basically," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "So we'll see."

The Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said later: "I think Republicans will be able to make the decisions for themselves." But he added that Obama is likely to get significant Republican support if he follows the advice of his military commanders. Boehner agreed, saying "my colleagues on the House side will be there to support" Obama if he stays true to the mission of denying a haven for al-Qaida terrorists or Taliban militants who are fiercely fighting coalition forces.

Won't ‘double down’ in Afghanistan
Obama's emphasis on working off a strong strategy did not mean he shed much light on what it would be. He did, though, seek to "dispense with the more extreme options on either side of the debate," as one administration official put it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the closed-door meeting.

The president made clear he would not "double down" in Afghanistan and build up U.S forces into the hundreds of thousands, just as he ruled out withdrawing forces and focusing on a narrow counterterrorism strategy.

"Half measures is what I worry about," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama's opponent in last year's election. He said Obama should follow the recommendations from those in uniform and dispatch thousands of more troops to the country — similar to what President George W. Bush did during the 2008 troop "surge" in Iraq. He also prodded Obama to act.

"It's pretty clear that time is not on our side," said McCain, one of the many lawmakers who met with the president.

Public support for the war in Afghanistan is dropping. It stands at 40 percent, down from 44 percent in July, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. A total of 69 percent of self-described Republicans in the poll favor sending more troops, while 57 percent of self-described Democrats oppose it.

The White House said Obama won't base his decisions on the mood on Capitol Hill or eroding public support for the war.

"The president is going to make a decision — popular or unpopular — based on what he thinks is in the best interests of the country," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Australia's Jetstar defends Myanmar flights

2009-09-29T11:01:00.003+06:30

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian budget airline Jetstar defended its flights into Myanmar on Monday after rights campaigners said the service was helping prop up the country's military regime.

AFP/File – A plane from Qantas airline budget carrier Jetstar at Sydney Airport. The Australian budget airline has …

Jetstar defended its four weekly flights from Singapore to Yangon as a "positive for the people of Myanmar" and denied making payments to officials in the Southeast Asian country.

Singapore-registered Jetstar Asia, a Jetstar affiliate, was one of eight companies named by Burma Campaign Australia -- which uses Myanmar's old name -- as directly or indirectly backing the junta to the tune of up to 2.8 billion US dollars in revenue.

"Jetstar believes the provision of viable air links for the people of Myanmar and the carrier's humanitarian contributions, including the assistance with flights for charitable organisations... have been a positive for the people of Myanmar," it said in a statement.

"While Jetstar Asia is obliged to meet normal aviation and airport charges in every country it operates in, it does not make payments to officials of the government of Myanmar, and has not," it added.

Zetty Brake, a spokeswoman for the Burma Campaign Australia, said every time the airline landed in the country it would be paying taxes which make their way back to the military regime.

Brake said most Myanmar residents would be unable to afford the flights.

"The people that are using these services from Burma are people with links to the regime," she told AFP.

Trade unions chief Sharan Burrow said all eight companies named by the campaign were contributing to the junta.

"The people there are subjected to the worst abuses of human rights and of course lack democracy," Burrow, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), told reporters.

"We say to those companies, cancel your operations. It will have a real impact."

Iran successfully test fires short-range missiles

2009-09-28T10:58:00.005+06:30

State TV reports test a day after short-range missile launch

EPA

Iran's Revolutionary Guards carry a missile test out during military manoeuvres at an undisclosed location.

msnbc | TEHRAN - Iran said it successfully test-fired short-range missiles during military drills Sunday by the elite Revolutionary Guard, a show of force days after the U.S. warned Tehran over a newly revealed underground nuclear facility it was secretly constructing.

Gen. Hossein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guard Air Force, said Iran also tested a multiple missile launcher for the first time. The official English-language Press TV showed pictures of at least two missiles being fired simultaneously and said they were from Sunday's drill in a central Iran desert. In the clip, men could be heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" as the missiles were launched.

"We are going to respond to any military action in a crushing manner and it doesn't make any difference which country or regime has launched the aggression," state media quoted Salami as saying. He said the missiles successfully hit their targets.

The powerful Revolutionary Guard defends Iran's clerical rulers. It has its own ground, naval and air units and its air force controls the country's missile program.

The tests came two days after the U.S. and its allies disclosed that Iran had been secretly developing a previously unknown underground uranium enrichment facility and warned the country it must open the nuclear site to international inspection or face harsher international sanctions. The drill was planned before that disclosure.

The newly revealed nuclear site in the arid mountains near the holy city of Qom is believed to be inside a heavily guarded, underground facility belonging to the Revolutionary Guard, according to a document sent by President Barack Obama's administration to lawmakers.

After the strong condemnations from the U.S. and its allies, Iran said Saturday it will allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to examine the site.

Nuclear experts said the details that have emerged about the site and the fact it was being developed secretly are strong indications that Iran's nuclear program is not only for peaceful purposes, as the country has long maintained.

By U.S. estimates, Iran is one to five years away from having a nuclear weapons capability, although U.S. intelligence also believes that Iranian leaders have not yet made the decision to build a weapon.

Iran also is developing a longer-range ballistic missile that could carry a nuclear warhead, but the administration said last week that it believes that effort has been slowed. That assessment paved the way for Obama's decision to shelve the Bush administration's plan for a missile shield in Europe, which was aimed at defending against Iranian ballistic missiles.

Salami said Iran would test medium-range Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 missiles on Sunday night and a longer-range Shahab-3 missiles on Monday, during drills set to last several days.

Salami said Fateh, Tondar and Zelzal missiles were test fired on Sunday, but did not give specifics on range or other details. All are short-range, surface-to-surface missiles.

He told reporters Iran had reduced the missiles and their ranges and enhanced their speed and precision so they could be used in quick, short-range engagements. He also said they are now able to be launched from positions that are not as easy to hit.

He said the Revolutionary Guards' current missile tests and military drills are indications of Iran's resolve to defend its national values and part of a strategy of deterrence and containment of missile threats.

Salami claimed Iran has started "running into difficulties storing so many missiles" with its recent progress on its missile program.

Iran has had the solid-fuel Fateh missile, with a range of 120 miles, for several years. Fateh means conqueror in Farsi and Arabic. It also has the solid-fueled, Chinese-made CSS 8, also called the Tondar 69, according to the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a private group that seeks to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The Tondar, which means thunder, has a range of about 93 miles.

State media said the Revolutionary Guard tested a multiple launcher for the first time, designed for the Zelzal missile. Tehran has previously tested the Zelzal — versions of which have ranges of 130-185 miles — but only single launch.

In July 2006, Israeli military officials said their jets had destroyed a missile in Lebanon named Zelzal, which they said Hezbollah had received from Iran and could reach Tel Aviv. Zelzal means earthquake.

Iran's last known missile tests were in May when it fired its longest-range solid-fuel missile, Sajjil-2. Tehran said the two-stage surface-to-surface missile has a range of about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) — capable of striking Israel, U.S. Mideast bases and southeastern Europe.

The revelation of Iran's secret site has given greater urgency to a key meeting on Thursday in Geneva between Iran and six major powers trying to stop its suspected nuclear weapons program.

The U.S. and its partners plan to tell Tehran at the meeting that it must provide "unfettered access" for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, within weeks.

The facility is Iran's second uranium-enrichment site working to produce the fuel to power a nuclear reactor, or potentially the material for a weapon.

A close aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday the site will be operational soon and would pose a threat to those who oppose Iran.

"This new facility, God willing, will become operational soon and will blind the eyes of the enemies," Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani told the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Evidence of the clandestine facility was presented Friday by Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh. On Saturday, Obama offered Iran "a serious, meaningful dialogue" over its disputed nuclear program, while warning Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Saturday the revelation was firm proof Iran was seeking nuclear weapons.

Israel considers Iran a strategic threat with its nuclear program, missile development and repeated calls by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Israel's destruction. It has not ruled out a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear sites.

In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reaction and in 2007, Israel bombed a site in Syria that the U.S. said was a nearly finished nuclear reactor built with North Korean help that was configured to produce plutonium — one of the substances used in nuclear warheads.

Israel's Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the missile tests.

Iranian Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the country's nuclear program, said Saturday that U.N. nuclear inspectors could visit the nuclear site. On Sunday, he told Press TV Iran and the IAEA would work out the timing of the inspection.

The small-scale site is meant to house no more than 3,000 centrifuges — much less than the 8,000 machines at Natanz, Iran's known industrial-scale enrichment facility, but they could still potentially help create bomb-making material.

Experts have estimated that Iran's current number of centrifuges could enrich enough uranium for a bomb in as little as a year. Washington has been pushing for heavier sanctions if Iran does not agree to end enrichment.

Poll: Public pessimistic about Afghanistan

2009-09-23T09:21:00.003+06:30

NBC/WSJ survey: Nearly six in 10 less confident about fate of war

By Mark Murray / NBC | WASHINGTON - As President Barack Obama weighs sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that Americans are concerned about the progress of the conflict there.

Nearly six in 10 say they’re less confident the war will come to a successful conclusion, and a narrow majority of respondents (51 percent) oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan.

However, a majority of Americans (55 percent) also oppose an immediate and orderly withdrawal from that war zone, and the public is split over whether the conflict there has been worth the costs and casualties.

“We are witnessing a divided country, but one that is less optimistic,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart.

The poll of 1,005 adults was conducted Sept. 17-20, and has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points. It comes after the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Stanley A. McChrystal, wrote a confidential report arguing that the war will result in failure unless more troops are sent there.

Yet it also comes as news reports suggest that the Obama administration has begun considering whether to bolster counterterrorism efforts in neighboring Pakistan instead of launching a large-scale counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.

Strikingly, the poll shows that there’s a generational split over whether to send more U.S. troops into Afghanistan. While slightly more than half of Americans oppose an expansion of the war, 52 percent of those who are 50 years old or older support it.

By comparison, just 35 percent of those under the age of 50 back a troop increase there, while 62 percent oppose it.

Measuring Obama’s health blitz
The NBC/Journal survey also comes as Obama has launched a media blitz to sell his push to overhaul the nation’s health care system, delivering a prime-time speech to Congress, holding rallies in Minnesota and Maryland, appearing on five Sunday-morning news programs and even sitting down with talk-show host David Letterman.

According to the poll, the president’s health care numbers have slightly increased since this blitz, although that increase remains within the margin of error. Thirty-nine percent believe Obama’s health care plan is a good idea, which is up three points since August. Forty-one percent say it’s a bad idea.

'Deadlock' after Obama Middle East meeting

2009-09-23T09:02:00.003+06:30

(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

President Obama watches on as Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel (left) and Mahmoud Abbas shake hands ahead of their meeting, at which there was little reported progress

Catherine Philp in New York | President Obama increased the pressure on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to restart talks as he gambled on a landmark meeting to jolt the stalled peace process back to life.

Speaking before bringing the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, together for talks, a stern Mr Obama warned that a sense of urgency was required to lay the foundations for peace.

“Success depends on all sides acting with a sense of urgency,” Mr Obama told reporters before sitting down for the three-way meeting. “Permanent status negotiations must begin and begin soon. It is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward.”

After the talks Mr Abbas and George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, indicated that little progress had been made.

Yasser Abed Raddo, a Palestinian official, said that Mr Abbas had restated his demand for a complete Israeli settlement freeze. Mr Netanyahu, in turn, had demanded that the Palestinians recognise the state of Israel.

Mr Netanyahu confirmed the account, calling on Mr Abbas to recognise the Jewish state but denying that it amounted to a precondition. He blamed the Palestinians for the impasse, insisting that Israel was impatient for talks.

“The issue of settlements has to be discussed within these talks, not before,” he told CNN. “Let’s just get on with it, start the peace process.”

Expectations of a breakthrough had been described before the meeting as “lower than the Dead Sea”, a reflection of US fears that no progress would be made at all.

Before the cameras, Mr Obama coaxed the two leaders into a handshake and stood back as they gripped hands, smiling wanly but studiously avoiding each other’s eyes. Mr Obama stood between the two, clearly feeling the frost.

Palestinians have said that they will not return to talks with Israel until there is a complete freeze on settlement building in the West Bank — a stance that Washington has largely backed. Mr Netanyahu has remained intransigent, offering partial freezes unacceptable to the Palestinians.

Washington is reluctant to drop its demand for a freeze, fearing that negotiations will get nowhere if “painful concessions” are not made to create the right environment for talks. “The launching of negotiations is not a end in itself,” Mr Mitchell said after the meetings. “We need more peace and less process.”

Mr Obama made clear that the American diplomatic offensive would continue, saying that Mr Mitchell would meet Israeli and Palestinian negotiators again next week and that the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, would report back to him next month on the status of talks.

Nepal beset by chaos and conjecture

2009-09-23T08:47:00.003+06:30

(photo: AP / )

By Dhruba Adhikary | KATHMANDU - If the absence of war alone can be considered a sign of peace, then Nepal could provide a basis for optimism. But ground realities here suggest otherwise.

A recently released index from Foreign Policy depicted Nepal as 25th most likely nation to become a failed state, out of the 60 most vulnerable countries. The group found that conditions in Nepal are not as bad as Somalia, Afghanistan and Uganda, but more disturbing than in Lebanon, Burkina Faso and Colombia.

But Nepal's beleaguered Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal does not like to present himself as the leader of a trouble-torn

country, with a work style that more suggests "business-as-usual". He departed the country on Sunday evening for New York, where he is scheduled to address the United Nations on Saturday.

Maoists are at the forefront of Nepal's upheaval. Unlike during the April uprising of 2006, when they abandoned a decade-long armed insurgency and entered the world of "competitive politics", the Maoist cadres are now carrying out attacks - both verbal and physical - on their rivals, leaving innocent people vulnerable and helpless.

The cadres are obviously executing orders from the Maoist leaders, who have publicly spoken about the need for another round of Jana-aandolan or popular movement. The chairman (and former prime minister) Prachanda and his deputy Baburam Bhattarai have begun arguing that a final push is needed to wipe out the remnants of feudalism associated with the monarchy, which was abolished in May 2008.

A manifestation of the Maoist resolve and determination to topple the "puppet regime" led by Nepal since May this year has surfaced on the streets of capital, Kathmandu and other parts of the country in recent weeks.

Much wrath is focused on President Ram Baran Yadav as well as Prime Minister Nepal and the ministers in his cabinet. They are greeted with black flags whenever they appear at public functions.
Maoists often try first to prevent such functions by placing roadblocks and engaging security personnel in fist-fights. If this does not work, they sneak into the program venue and create chaos, pelting stones at the dais, shouting slogans and waving black scarves at the guests.

Last Wednesday, Maoist youths displayed insulting behavior towards Yadav when he was on tour at Lumbini, the birthplace of the Lord Buddha, as comrades in Kathmandu made the prime minister their target while he was conducting a university convocation. There, some dressed as gown-wearing graduates and threw stones on the stage as they jeered the prime minister. (The premier has faced the criticism that he is an "unelected leader" as he was twice defeated in April 2008 polls, but was made a nominated member of the assembly from where he was selected to the present post.)

The police briefly detained the protestors, including the daughter of Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai. Although no serious injuries were reported, it was a serious enough incident to challenge the state authority under the present dispensation.

Guns have not been used in any noticeable way thus far, but credible threats to use them abound. "Guns will be used to confront guns," said Bhattarai in a recent public meeting in his home district of Gorakha, in the western hills.

In the meantime, there was highly charged atmosphere as a war of words ensued between the prime minister and Maoist leader Prachanda. In Prachanda's view, the prime minister is like "a hangman". The prime minister countered by describing Prachanda as a "bloodthirsty tyrant".

The prime minister has tried to look confident as well as tough, despite the fact that some of his senior colleagues in his party, the Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), are not supportive of his belligerent approach towards the Maoists.

Earlier, the Maoists said they would boycott public functions, beginning on September 6, to be attended by the president, the prime minister and ministers. They have said the boycott is in protest against a nominated member being prime minister. They say the elected members - the Maoist former rebels emerged as the largest political party in a 2008 election for a special constituent assembly after their 2006 ceasefire - are being denied the opportunity to lead the transitional government entrusted with supervising Nepal's constitution-writing process.

Maoists have also made the boycott "active" by using disruptive measures. Suddenly, the state security apparatus looks overstretched in protecting the politicians in power. The Maoist leaders are trying to convince the public that whatever is being done is for the establishment of civilian supremacy, as opposed to military supremacy.

Yadav and the premier are being controversially dragged into this. The contention is that the president took an unconstitutional step by issuing an order to rescue the Nepal Army chief, who was sacked by the prime minister for having defied legitimate government orders.

Prachanda resigned immediately, in early May, from the prime minister's post in protest. No efforts, the Maoists argue, were made to address the issue they raised. On the contrary, they say, someone rejected by voters was made the leader of an artificial coalition of 22 parties and subsequently appointed prime minister. Opinions are divided and a court case is pending over the constitutionality of the presidential action.

Meanwhile, the Maoists have taken the case to the National Assembly, disrupting its proceedings for several weeks. They have registered a resolution there seeking a debate on the validity of the president's action. The speaker rejected the demand on technical grounds, providing them a constitutional option to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president.

The Maoists are not taking this course because they know they don't have the numerical strength, of two-thirds, in the 601-strong Constituent Assembly (which also acts as the interim parliament). Instead, they resorted to the controversial, although not unprecedented, method of stalling house business. Maoist members of the house, however, have not stopped collecting their allowances, even when they are not working.

The main task of the Constituent Assembly is to draw up a republican constitution to replace the present one, by the end of May 2010. Progress is visibly slow, and not only due to Maoist activities.

Inside the house, members are squabbling over the basis for creating federal units, official languages of the republic - and a move for legislative control of the judiciary, something unacceptable to all except the Maoists.

Last week, a question was raised about the national flag, which, some said, does not represent inclusiveness. "Are the sun and the moon, depicted on the flag, giving light and shine to all ethnic communities without discrimination?" said Ganesh Pandit, who once worked as a member of parliament after the democratic restoration of 1990. Time, energy and resources are being wasted recklessly, accentuating the concerns of Nepal's friends and donors.

The issue of how to find an amicable solution before dismantling the United Nations-supervised cantonments where nearly 20,000 former Maoist combatants are sheltered is far from resolved. Whether a democratic statute can be drawn up and whether the election to be held afterwards would remain free and fair is a matter of serious concern to all stakeholders. The Maoists want their fighters integrated into the national army, but the army is hesitant to accept what is sees as a politically indoctrinated force into its midst.

Contemporary events and trends indicate that Nepal is unlikely to have a new constitution by the agreed deadline. All that the leaders of the main political parties appear to be doing now is to look for a convenient pretext so that blame for inaction can be placed on their rivals.

No one is serious about their original pledge to take the peace process to a logical conclusion. The pledge requires them to work together and not engage in a game played in peacetime politics, at least until the country has a new constitution.

The interim constitution has a provision to extend the life of the assembly up to six months in the event the country is placed under a state of emergency. There could be an attempt to invoke this provision as some of the members may be tempted to retain the perks and privileges they enjoy.

There is also a premonition of a "political accident" which could nullify the democratic gains made since 2006. The feared "accident" may result in presidential rule with the help of the army. Another possible option is direct rule by the army. Kamal Thapa, head of a pro-monarchist party, appears hopeful of even the restoration of the kingship. His party, Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal, has four seats in the 601-member assembly.

The reaction of Nepal's immediate - as well as more distant - neighbors might be interesting should it be placed under another form of transition. Those placing importance on stability and order might not object. And those who are averse to seeing the Maoist phenomenon spreading in South Asia also may look at the development favorably.

Asia impacted by US missile shift

2009-09-23T08:04:00.005+06:30

(photo: AP Photo / Itsuo Inouye)

By Peter J Brown | United States President Barack Obama and members of his administration are going to great lengths to explain the reasons why the US abruptly changed course with respect to its anti-missile strategy for Europe. In the process, little or nothing has been said about the impact of this new plan on Asia.

Silence or not, both China and Japan must assess the consequences of this activity because what the US is now proposing for Europe in terms of missile defense is right in line with what has been unfolding all along in East Asia, where the US Navy forms the front line for the US missile shield, backed by land-based interceptors in increasing numbers and a powerful radar network both on land and at sea.

Last Thursday, Obama announced he was halting plans to deploy

10 missile interceptors in Poland and a related radar in the Czech Republic,a shield that had been proposed under the George W Bush administration. Instead, a different missile-defense plan will rely on a network of sensors and interceptor missiles based at sea, on land and in the air to meet what Obama called "the most pressing threat from Iran to US troops and allies in Europe" - potential attacks by short- and medium-range missiles.

United Secretary Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, writing on the op-ed page of the New York Times at the weekend, made no mention of Asia, for example.

The new approach to European missile defense actually provides us with greater flexibility to adapt as new threats develop and old ones recede. For example, the new proposal provides some anti-missile capacity very soon - a hedge against Iran's managing to field missiles much earlier than had been previously predicted. The old plan offered nothing for almost a decade.

Those who say we are scrapping missile defense in Europe are either misinformed or misrepresenting what we are doing. This shift has even been distorted as some sort of concession to Russia, which has fiercely opposed the old plan. Russia's attitude and possible reaction played no part in my recommendation to the president on this issue.

The US announcement in this instance appears premature. Why Obama was not advised to hold off on this decision at least until after his trip to Asia in November is a mystery. Obama's visit will include an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Singapore, along with calls on China, and probably Japan and South Korea as well.

When it comes to US economic and national security concerns, China - not Russia - is Obama's top priority. And North Korea's actions, not Iran's present posturing, is what has preoccupied US ballistic missile defense (BMD) planners so intensely over the past five years.

The US decision does not put Asia at risk, but it does not fit well with current US efforts to improve ties with China at a time when North Korea is happy to cast itself as the largest dormant volcano in Northeast Asia. Obama is displaying a lack of predictability, and this weighs on US-China relations. Making China uncomfortable at this point is not a good idea because Beijing equates a failure to appreciate the need for predictability with instability, and perhaps even distrust.

Although China no doubt welcomes the fact that no meeting with the Dalai Lama - the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader - will take place until after Obama returns from Asia, China is anxious about the expanding and rapidly shifting US missile defense network in East Asia.

China's anxiety, especially when the US is doing something which in turn mirrors the strategic mindset of the US Navy in the Asia-Pacific region in particular, is not to be taken lightly because too much electricity is already in the air whenever the two sides sit down to exchange viewpoints.

The extent of the polarization was demonstrated last month when Guan Youfei, deputy director for China's Defense Ministry's Foreign Affairs Office, and Randolph Alles, director of the Strategy and Policy Bureau of the US Pacific Command, along with their respective delegations, met in Beijing to discuss what has been happening lately in the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea.

"China believes the constant US military air and sea surveillance and survey operations in China's exclusive economic zone had led to military confrontations between the two sides," China's Defense Ministry said. "The way to resolve China-US maritime incidents is for the US to change its surveillance and survey operations policies against China, decrease and eventually stop such operations."

Nothing ambiguous there, in stark contrast to the very ambiguous nature of the latest US announcement. Take a good look at this statement a second time.

"The new approach to European missile defense actually provides us with greater flexibility to adapt as new threats develop and old ones recede," Gates wrote.

China cannot ignore the fact that by implication, this US emphasis on "greater flexibility" is not limited to threats in Europe. Furthermore, by making such an abrupt change of direction in Europe, China must be wondering if the US might engage in the same behavior right on its doorstep.

Ever since the resumption of the Defense Policy Coordination Talks in Beijing in February, China has been quite consistent in the messages that it has been sending to the US regarding renewed military ties, which suffered a serious setback following the US decision to sell Patriot missiles and other military equipment to Taiwan.

"China-US military relations remain difficult. We expect the United States to take concrete measures for the resumption and development of our military ties," said Qian Lihua, director of the Foreign Affairs Office of China's Defense Ministry in February.

In early September, Admiral Robert F Willard, Commander US Pacific Fleet, posted this on his personal blog site: "Our Relationship With China's PLA Navy". In it, he recognizes the challenges that confront the US as it attempts to improve relations. [1]

The United States Navy has many partners in this region of the world, many allies and close navies. There are some that we're seeking to improve our relations with. One of those is China. There has been great interest as China has emerged over the past decades in seeking ways and means to engage with China at all levels of government, to include the military. This has sometimes been difficult for us. On occasion our military-to-military engagement has been suspended as a result of political issues that have arisen between the US and China, and at times our encounters with Chinese military forces have been less than constructive in nature.

That said, it is incumbent on us and on our counterparts in the PLA Navy, to seek to leverage areas of common interest and we have many ... We also have to seek to find the forums to engage and discuss our differences. There are a number of those. We meet in forums throughout the Asian region including the Western Pacific Naval Symposium, and others, where we have opportunities to engage with our Chinese counterparts. And, in those I think it's important that some of these areas of difference, or differences in interpretation in international law, come out and be discussed openly.

While Willard's tone and choice of words are positive and reveal that he supports what is underway, it is unclear how China gauges the impact of the US decision in Europe on China's attempts to convince the US Pacific Fleet to be less intrusive.

Given that the core of the new US anti-missile defense strategy in Europe involves a layered approach starting with the careful placement of US Navy BMD-capable, Aegis-equipped warships, and augmented quickly if circumstances warrant by a surge of additional ships, it looks like China faces an uphill battle.

At the time of the recent North Korean satellite launch - keep in mind that many experts have challenged North Korea's depiction of the launch as a satellite launch as opposed to a long-range missile test - only two US Navy BMD-capable, Aegis-equipped destroyers out of a total of 15 of this type were assigned somewhere other than the Pacific. In addition, there were three US Navy BMD-capable, Aegis-equipped cruisers assigned to the Pacific Fleet, bring the total to 18 ships in the Pacific.

While plans had been approved previously by the US Department of Defense to upgrade several more existing warships in this manner, experts are now debating exactly how many US BMD-capable, Aegis-equipped warships will have to be reassigned to help defend Europe.

This naval force restructuring triggered by the Obama administration's decision coupled with the fact that a surge mechanism is built into the overall formula means that the US Navy's capabilities in this regard will undergo a significant expansion - sooner rather than later. New ships may have to be built to accomplish this objective.

Besides possibly expanding the US Navy - navy shipbuilding is a controversial topic in itself these days - if the Obama administration with its enthusiasm for sudden moves is so inclined, what is to prevent it from broadening the new space-related, high-technology transfer agreements signed by India and the US this summer?

In addition, there is a wild card here in the form of the joint activities involving India and Israel. While their joint space activities in particular have been quite limited in scope to date, the US is not doing anything to restrain India from pursuing this relationship in parallel with other projects involving the US.

At the same time, the recent announcement that South Korea will soon be deploying Israel's "Green Pine" anti-missile radar technology - for protection from short-range missile barrages - only reinforces this notion that all the pieces are falling into place quickly on China's doorstep, and that the US is quite active behind the scenes to make sure these things happen.

The anti-missile interceptors sitting in their silos in Alaska make it clear that Asia is where the US sees the greatest threat to its security, while critics contend these are little more than a grand and very expensive exercise in self-deception.

At the same time, China realizes that unforeseen events might drive the US to pursue other options at very short notice. When it comes to Iran, this means that the US and its allies need to be quite agile.

"The technology they have at hand is sufficient to embark on an IRBM [intermediate range ballistic missile] program at any minute if they decide, but it is still not sufficient to embark on a 10,000 kilometer missile which would be both capable of delivering a meaningful payload, and small enough and light enough to be based in silo or upon a mobile launcher," said Uzi Rubin, an Israeli missile defense expert. "I agree that this is the situation at this moment. However, this does not preclude the possibility that they are pursuing further refinement of their technologies such that it will enable them to develop survivable ICBMs. But all this is speculation."

"There is no evidence that the Iranians are proceeding on an ICBM program, neither slow nor fast - but then there is no evidence that they are not. [There are only projections and speculation.] Former president George W Bush chose to pick the more pessimistic projection because it served his political agenda, and President Obama chose to pick the more optimistic one because it served his political agenda," Rubin added.

As for Japan, where a new government is forming, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has been given little time to prepare for this stunning announcement as he heads to the US this week. He has gone to great lengths this month to assure the US that despite the need for a few adjustments, Japan values its strategic relationship with the US. However, now Hatoyama is no doubt hearing a strong message from members of his own party as well as others in his coalition government who might find the US sudden change in direction in Europe to be disconcerting for Japan as well.

Hatoyama is already being pressured by several of his fellow Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) members who remind him that he cannot adhere to his campaign pledge to be an agent for true change in Japan if he does not cut defense spending, and as long as he continues to uphold the status quo in terms of the US-Japanese alliance. DPJ member Tsuyochi Yamaguchi, for example, might view this US decision as another opportunity to remind Hatoyama that the current US anti-missile umbrella is simply not going to be able to defend Japan in the way everyone might expect.

On the other hand, Hatoyama might not be open to any attempts to convince him to question the reliability and performance capabilities of US anti-missile technology because Japan is fully engaged with the US in the ongoing development of new ground-based interceptors, among other things. However, the fact that Poland was abandoned so abruptly, and that a decision was made by the US to not simply layer all the elements of the new anti-missile system atop the one already planned is something that is going to be very hard for him to ignore.

So, as Asian leaders old and new arrive in the US this week for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, you can bet that they have their own less-publicized concerns about Obama's decision.

'Dirty Dancing' star Patrick Swayze dies at 57

2009-09-15T20:05:00.003+06:30

(photo: AP / )

By CHRISTY LEMIRE AP | LOS ANGELES — Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into moviegoers' hearts with "Dirty Dancing" and then broke them with "Ghost," died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

"Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," his publicist, Annett Wolf, said in a statement Monday evening. Swayze died in Los Angeles, Wolf said, but she declined to give further details.

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer. He kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting "The Beast," an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot.

Swayze said he opted not to use painkilling drugs while making "The Beast" because they would have taken the edge off his performance. The show drew a respectable 1.3 million viewers when the 13 episodes ran in 2009, but A&E said it had reluctantly decided not to renew it for a second season.

When he first went public with the illness, some reports gave him only weeks to live, but his doctor said his situation was "considerably more optimistic" than that. Swayze acknowledged that time might be running out given the grim nature of the disease.

"I'd say five years is pretty wishful thinking," Swayze told ABC's Barbara Walters in early 2009. "Two years seems likely if you're going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I'd better get a fire under it."

LEFTERIS PITARAKIS AP

FILE - In this Nov. 28, 2005 file photo, actor Patrick Swayze poses for the photographers, prior to the premiere of his new film "Keeping Mum" at a Leicester Square cinema in central London. Swayze's publicist Annett Wolf says the 57-year-old "Dirty Dancing" actor died Monday, Sept. 14, 2009, after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, file)

C. Thomas Howell, who costarred with Swayze in "The Outsiders," "Grandview U.S.A." and "Red Dawn," said: "I have always had a special place in my heart for Patrick. While I was fortunate enough to work with him in three films, it was our passion for horses that forged a friendship between us that I treasure to this day. Not only did we lose a fine actor today, I lost my older `Outsiders' brother."

Other celebrities used Twitter to express condolences, and "Dirty Dancing" was the top trending topic for a while Monday night, trailed by several other Swayze films.

Ashton Kutcher — whose wife, Demi Moore, costarred with Swayze in "Ghost" — wrote: "RIP P Swayze." Kutcher also linked to a YouTube clip of the actor poking fun at himself in a classic "Saturday Night Live" sketch, in which he played a wannabe Chippendales dancer alongside the corpulent — and frighteningly shirtless — Chris Farley.

Larry King wrote: "Patrick Swayze was a wonderful actor & a terrific guy. He put his heart in everything. He was an extraordinary fighter in his battle w Cancer." King added that he'd do a tribute to Swayze on his CNN program on Tuesday night.

A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad boy Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing." As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.

A coming-of-age romance starring Jennifer Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort's sexy (and much older) dance instructor, the film made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.

It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," stage productions and a sequel, 2004's "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," in which he made a cameo.

Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad "She's Like the Wind," inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick "Road House," in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990's "Ghost" that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Moore) — with great frustration and longing — through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.

Swayze said at the time that he fought for the role of Sam Wheat (director Jerry Zucker wanted Kevin Kline) but once he went in for an audition and read six scenes, he got it.

Why did he want the part so badly? "It made me cry four or five times," he said of Bruce Joel Rubin's Oscar-winning script in an AP interview.

"Ghost" provided yet another indelible musical moment: Swayze and Moore sensually molding pottery together to the strains of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." It also earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Goldberg, who said she wouldn't have won if it weren't for Swayze.

"When I won my Academy Award, the only person I really thanked was Patrick," Goldberg said in March 2008 on the ABC daytime talk show "The View."

Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for "Dirty Dancing," "Ghost" and 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.

His heartthrob status almost kept him from being considered for the role of Vida Boheme.

"I couldn't get seen on it because everyone viewed me as terminally heterosexually masculine-macho," he told The Associated Press then. But he transformed himself so completely that when his screen test was sent to Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin pictures produced "To Wong Foo," Spielberg didn't recognize him.

Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders," alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane.

Other '80s films included "Red Dawn," "Grandview U.S.A." (for which he also provided choreography) and "Youngblood," once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.

In the '90s, he made such eclectic films as "Point Break" (1991), in which he played the leader of a band of bank-robbing surfers, and the family Western "Tall Tale" (1995), in which he starred as Pecos Bill. He appeared on the cover of People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991, but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had a stay in rehab for alcohol abuse. In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite "Donnie Darko," and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with "Chicago"; 2006 found him in the musical "Guys and Dolls" in London.

Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include "Urban Cowboy."

He played football but also was drawn to dance and theater, performing with the Feld, Joffrey and Harkness Ballets and appearing on Broadway as Danny Zuko in "Grease." But he turned to acting in 1978 after a series of injuries.

Within a couple years of moving to Los Angeles, he made his debut in the roller-disco movie "Skatetown, U.S.A." The eclectic cast included Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormack and Billy Barty.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa to shine a light on "man's greed and absolute unwillingness to operate according to Mother Nature's laws," he told the AP in 2004.

Swayze was married since 1975 to Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. A licensed pilot, Niemi would fly her husband from Los Angeles to Northern California for treatment at Stanford University Medical Center.

In February, Swayze wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post titled, "I'm Battling Cancer. How About Some Help, Congress?" in which he urged senators and representatives to vote for the maximum funding for the National Institutes of Health to fight cancer as part of the economic stimulus package.

He also appeared in the September 2008 live television event "Stand Up to Cancer," where he made this moving plea: "I keep dreaming of a future, a future with a long and healthy life, a life not lived in the shadow of cancer, but in the light. ... I dream that the word `cure' will no longer be followed by the words `is impossible.'"

Bin Laden says Obama 'powerless' in Afghan war

2009-09-15T19:59:00.002+06:30

(photo: AP)

IAN BLACK | OSAMA BIN LADEN has taunted Barack Obama that he is “powerless” to stop the war in Afghanistan, days after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and amid signs that al-Qaeda is under heavy US military pressure in its Pakistani havens.

Bin Laden’s message, his first since one just before Mr Obama’s speech reaching out to the Muslim world in Cairo in June, accused the US president of following the strategy of George Bush and Dick Cheney to “promote the previous policies of fear to market the interest of big companies”.

But some analysts found it less strident than previous statements, perhaps reflecting al-Qaeda’s current weakness, and detected an attempt to exploit divisions of opinion within the US administration about policy towards Israel.

“Rather than fighting to liberate Iraq – as Bush claimed – it [the White House] should have been liberated,” Bin Laden said. But when Obama became president and kept many Bush administration military leaders, such as the defence secretary, Robert Gates, “reasonable people knew Obama is a powerless man who will not be able to end the war as he promised”.

If authenticated, the 11-minute audio tape posted on an Islamist website by as-Sahab Media, al-Qaeda’s production arm, would prove Bin Laden is alive, though the fact that it contained no new image of him may hint at communications difficulties or security concerns.

References to Obama’s Cairo speech and the visit to Gaza made by former US president Jimmy Carter suggested that the tape had been made since June. It appeared despite a cyber-battle that has seen several jihadi website discussion forums hacked or otherwise interfered with, presumably by governments, in recent days.

Bin Laden emphasised US backing for Israel as a key reason for Arab and Muslim grievances, even as the Obama administration intensifies diplomatic efforts to restart stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. “Prolong the wars as much as you like. By God, we will never compromise on it [Palestine], ever,” he said.

Dia Rashwan, of the al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, noted that, unusually, the message contained no specific warnings and failed to praise the 9/11 hijackers.

Anwar Eshki, of the Middle East Centre for Strategic Studies in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, said: “This is the first time I have seen Bin Laden that weak . . . The message shows that he is in a difficult situation, especially since we have heard that he has started to feel the pressure in the Pakistani tribal areas at a time when a lot of militants are leaving Pakistan for Yemen or Somalia.” – ( Guardian service)

Indonesia province OKs stoning for adulterers

2009-09-15T10:10:00.001+06:30

Human rights groups say law violates international treaties

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Lawmakers in a devoutly Muslim Indonesian province voted unanimously Monday that adulterers could be sentenced to death by stoning, just months after voters overwhelmingly chose to throw conservative Islamic parties out of power.

Only weeks before the new government, led by the moderate Aceh Party, is set to take over, the regional parliament still controlled by hard-liners pushed through steep punishments for adultery and homosexuality.

The chairman of the 69-seat house asked if the bill could be passed into law and members answered in unison: "Yes, it can." Some members of the moderate Democrat Party voiced reservations, but none of them voted against the bill.

Human rights groups said the law violates international treaties signed by Indonesia. The province's deputy governor also opposed the legislation, saying it needed more careful consideration because it imposes a new form of capital punishment.

The Aceh Party is also believed to have a less strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah, and some activists expressed hope that once in power, they would amend or tone down the law. Others were considering contesting the bill in court in the capital, Jakarta.

Semiautonomous region
Aceh, where Islam first arrived in Indonesia from Saudi Arabia centuries ago, enjoys semiautonomy from the central government. A long-running Islamic insurgency in the province ended in 2005 in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 130,000 there.

A version of Shariah that was introduced in Aceh in 2001 already bans gambling and drinking alcohol, and makes it compulsory for women to wear headscarves. Dozens of public canings have been carried out by the local Shariah police against violators of that law.

The majority of Indonesia's roughly 200 Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith, and surveys suggest they do not support such hard-line interpretations of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Stoning is legally sanctioned in varying forms in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and parts of Nigeria. Illegal stonings have also been reported in recent years in Iraq and Somalia. But its use is a point of contention among Islamic scholars.

The most notable example in modern Islam was that of Amina Lawal, a young woman who was sentenced to death in a Nigerian state in 2002 for having sex outside marriage, but was later released.

The new Indonesian law also imposes tough sentences and fines, to be paid in kilograms of gold, for rape and pedophilia, but the most hotly disputed article was on adultery and states that offenders can be punished by a minimum of 100 lashings and a maximum of stoning to death.

Lashings, prison for homosexuality
"The stoning to death is the toughest punishment included in the (new) Shariah law," Bahrom Rasjid, one of the drafters and a member of the United Development Party, said after its passage.

It also imposes severe prison terms for other behavior considered morally unacceptable, including homosexuality, which will be punishable by public lashings and more than eight years in prison.

The bill violates national and international treaties signed by Indonesia protecting the rights of minorities and women, said a gay rights activist in Aceh who requested anonymity because he feared for his safety.

"It's discriminatory, and it's saddening, but we are quite sure members of civil society who are concerned with human rights will not sit by silently," the activist said, adding that he hopes the new moderate leadership in the province will overturn the law after taking power next month.

Aceh Vice Governor Muhamad Nazar said that even though his office opposed the clause on stoning to death it has no legal power to block it. "Whatever law is passed we have to enforce it," he said.

Obama clings to hope as Iran hawks circle

2009-09-15T09:54:00.003+06:30

(photo: AP / Charles Dharapak)

Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe | WASHINGTON - As nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West continue to move slowly, United States President Barack Obama is coming under growing pressure from what appears to be a concerted lobbying and media campaign urging him to act more aggressively to stop Iran's nuclear program.

Obama has given Tehran an end-of-September deadline to respond substantively to his offer of diplomatic engagement. But already hawks in the US - backed by hardline pro-Israel organizations - have pressed him to quickly impose "crippling" economic sanctions against Tehran, and some are arguing that he should make preparations for a military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The pressure campaign kicked off in earnest last week. On

September 10, hundreds of leaders and activists from the US Jewish community descended on Washington to lobby for harsher sanctions, while widely publicized media reports suggested that Iran is already nearing the verge of nuclear capability.

Leaders from Jewish groups came for a national "Advocacy Day on Iran", during which they met with key congressional figures.

Representative Howard Berman, a California Democrat who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, suggested that the clock "has almost run out" on Iran's nuclear program, and indicated that he would move ahead next month with a bill imposing sanctions on Iran's refined petroleum imports "absent some compelling evidence why I should do otherwise".

The bill, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA), has for months been the top lobbying priority of hawkish pro-Israel lobbying groups led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). To their frustration, Berman has held up consideration of the bill for most of the past year

Not all US Jewish groups are lining up behind the legislation, however.

Americans for Peace Now (APN), for instance, issued a statement arguing that "arbitrary deadlines are a mistake" and that "pursuing sanctions that target the Iranian people, rather than their leaders, is a morally and strategically perilous path that the Obama administration must reject".

MJ Rosenberg, a foreign policy analyst at Media Matters Action Network, suggested on the website TPMCafe that the advocacy day "marks the start of the fall push on Iran".

The advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) has launched an intensive television advertising campaign this month claiming that the US "must isolate Iran economically to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon".

UANI's two co-founders are now both high-ranking officials in the Obama administration - Dennis Ross, currently overseeing Iran policy at the National Security Council (NSC), and Richard Holbrooke, now the State Department special representative in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Also on Thursday, the New York Times published a front-page story claiming that US intelligence agencies believe "that Iran has created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid, if risky, sprint for a nuclear weapon", although the article did not provide an estimate of when Iran could have a nuclear capability.

The same day, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by former Senators Charles Robb and Daniel Coats and retired four-star Air Force General Chuck Wald. Claiming that Iran "will be able to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 2010", the authors urged Obama "to begin preparations for the use of military options" against Iran.

However, official US intelligence estimates provide a far slower timeline. In February, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dennis Blair told Congress that Iran would be unable to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) until at least 2013, and stated that there is "no evidence" that Iran had even made a decision to produce HEU.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is intended solely for civilian purposes. In 2007, the US intelligence community released a National Intelligence Estimate suggesting that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The campaign comes on the eve of a series of key international meetings in late September, including the annual opening of the UN General Assembly in New York and the Group of 20 (G-20) Summit in Pittsburgh.

Iran and its nuclear program are expected to be a major topic for world leaders who will attend these meetings, and hawks in Washington and Jerusalem hope that Obama will use them to push for the imposition of far-reaching economic sanctions by the UN Security Council as soon as possible.

While Obama faces pressure to move quickly to sanctions, the government of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is still struggling at home to overcome challenges to its legitimacy resulting from the disputed presidential election in June. Many analysts suggest that Iran's government is currently in no position to respond coherently to US engagement.

Last week, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki submitted Tehran's new proposals to representatives of the "Iran Six" powers - the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany - for talks on its nuclear program and related issues. (See Iran steps up to the nuclear table , Asia Times Online, September 11, 2009.)

As reported by Asia Times Online, "While the content of the package remains confidential, various Iranian officials, including Mottaki, have provided information that hints at a comprehensive approach that combines nuclear issues with other issues on Iran's foreign policy plate."

This was immediately praised by the IAEA's outgoing director general, Mohammad ElBaradei, who urged parties to "talk to each other and not at each other", according to a diplomat who attended the meeting.

But the five-page-proposal has been deemed too vague by Washington, with State Department spokesman PJ Crowley dismissing it last week as "not really responsive" to US concerns. Other analysts suggested that the Iranian proposal was more promising than initial media reports would indicate.

"Iran's uncompromising stance and its cursory references to nuclear matters are most likely an opening bid, and not a red line," wrote National Iranian American Council president Trita Parsi in the Huffington Post.

He suggests that the proposal's language "may offer an opening to push strongly for transparency and acceptance of intrusive inspections and verification mechanisms".

The Obama administration, however, continues to hold out hope for the engagement strategy.

"We'll be looking to see how ready Iran is to actually engage, and we will be testing that willingness to engage in the next few weeks," Crowley said.

At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov all but ruled out his country's cooperation with new sanctions against Tehran at the Security Council, and called instead for renewed negotiations based on Iran's reply.

Lavrov's comments came shortly after a secret and still-mysterious visit to Russia by Israel's right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (See Netanyahu plays a Russian rope trick , Asia Times Online, Sep 14, 2009).

The latest developments - along with growing amount of attention being paid to US policy in Afghanistan, at the expense of Iran - have only added to the frustration of Iran hawks in Washington. They believe increasingly that economic sanctions alone, even if they are imposed multilaterally, are unlikely to be enough to persuade Tehran to halt what they see as its drive to obtain a nuclear weapon.

For this reason, many suggest that the US should either make preparations to attack Iran militarily itself, or step aside and allow Israel to do so.

"No one should believe that tighter sanctions will, in the foreseeable future, have any impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program," former UN ambassador John Bolton, a noted hardliner, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month. "Adopting tougher economic sanctions is simply another detour away from hard decisions on whether to accept a nuclear Iran or support using force to prevent it."

Earlier that month, the Journal featured an article by General Wald - who was one of the co-authors of Thursday's op-ed urging preparations for a military strike - entitled "Of Course There's a Military Option on Iran".

But critics suggest that the constant threats of military action against Tehran will only make the regime's leadership more intransigent on the nuclear issue.

"Pointing a gun at their heads merely reinforces their desire for a reliable deterrent, and probably strengthens the hand of any Iranian officials who think they ought to get a bomb as soon as possible," wrote Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, on the website of Foreign Policy magazine.

NBC: U.S. forces kill al-Qaida leader in Somalia

2009-09-15T09:48:00.004+06:30

Militant was suspect in 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya, Tanzania

AFP - Getty Images file

Authorities say Saleh Ali Nabhan, seen in this 2002 photo, was the person who bought the car used to blow up a Mombasa hotel on Nov. 28, 2002.

NBC News and news services | MOGADISHU, Somalia - American special operations forces killed an al-Qaida terrorist during a helicopter commando assault in Somalia on Monday, NBC News reported.

U.S. officials told NBC that Saleh Ali Nabhan, suspected in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2002 bombing of a resort hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, was killed when at least one U.S. special operations helicopter opened fire on a suspected al-Qaida convoy south of Mogadishu.

Ali Nabhan was also suspected of operating al-Qaida training camps inside Somalia, NBC reported.

Two men were killed and two others wounded when foreign troops in helicopters strafed a car in a Somali town controlled by Islamist insurgents, The Associated Press reported.

The commando-style action took place in a village near Barawe amid growing fears that al-Qaida is gaining a foothold in this lawless nation.

Two U.S. military officials said forces from the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command were involved. The officials gave no official details about the raid or its target.

Many experts fear Somalia is becoming a haven for al-Qaida, a place for terrorists to train and gather strength — much like Afghanistan in the 1990s. The U.N.-backed government, with support from African Union peacekeepers, holds only a few blocks of Mogadishu, the war-ravaged capital.

Last year, U.S. missiles killed reputed al-Qaida commander Aden Hashi Ayro — the first major success after a string of U.S. military attacks in 2008.

Witness account
Like much of Somalia, Barawe and its surrounding villages are controlled by the militant group al-Shabab, which the U.S. accuses of having ties to al-Qaida. Al-Shabab, which has foreign fighters in its ranks, seeks to overthrow the government and impose a strict form of Islam in Somalia.

Witness Abdi Ahmed said six helicopters buzzed the village before two of the aircraft opened fire. After the helicopters fired, soldiers in military fatigues got out and left with the two wounded men.

"There was only a burning vehicle and two dead bodies lying beside it," said Mohamed Ali Aden, a bus driver who drove past the burnt-out car minutes after the attack, some 155 miles south of Mogadishu.

Somalia's weak government has very few resources and does not have helicopters or other modern equipment.

Witness Dahir Ahmed said the helicopters took off from a warship flying a French flag, but that could not be confirmed and French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck denied the attack was a French operation.

"They are not French helicopters," he said. France previously has launched commando raids to rescue French nationals.

Ravaged by violence
The U.S. government — haunted by the deadly 1993 U.S. military assault in Mogadishu chronicled in the 1999 book "Black Hawk Down," made into a 2001 film — is trying to neutralize the growing terrorist threat without sending in troops.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other. A moderate Islamist was elected president in January in hopes that he could unite the country's feuding factions, but the violence has continued unabated.

Mogadishu sees near-daily battles between government and insurgent forces. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed.

Somalia's lawlessness also has allowed piracy to flourish off its coast, making the Gulf of Aden one of the most dangerous waterways in the world.

Company: Regrets not disclosing misconduct

2009-09-15T09:40:00.004+06:30

Guards protecting embassy in Kabul held drunken parties, visited brothels

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

A U.S Marine from Delta Company searches an Afghan man for weapons near the town of Khan Neshin in Rig district of Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, on Sept.8.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | WASHINGTON - Photos showing private security guards in various stages of nudity at drunken parties may be as damaging to U.S. interests in Afghanistan as images of detainee mistreatment at Abu Ghraib were in Iraq, members of an independent panel investigating wartime spending said Monday.

The photos widely circulating on the Internet show guards, hired by ArmorGroup North America to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, engaging in lewd behavior and sexual misconduct, giving Muslims in Afghanistan a negative image of the United States and making the jobs of American officials there all the more difficult, they said.

During a hearing that lasted almost six hours, the Commission on Wartime Contracting sharply criticized representatives from ArmorGroup and the State Department for being unaware of what was happening and for not acting more aggressively to correct the situation.

Christopher Shays, co-chairman of the commission and a former Republican congressman, said he was stunned that Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's owner, did not know about the problems that allegedly ranged from out-of-control parties to ArmorGroup guards and supervisors frequenting brothels in Kabul.

"It says to me there is something so incredibly sick about your organization that that would be the case," Shays told Samuel Brinkley, a Wackenhut vice president. "Are you not aware that these pictures would be absolutely deadly for our forces, that it would undermine our mission?"

'Personnel behaved very badly'
The accusations by Shays, which were echoed by other panel members, led to several heated exchanges with Brinkley, who portrayed himself and other company executives as being blindsided by the misconduct of a small number of employees.

"I am not here to defend the indefensible," Brinkley said. "Certain of our personnel behaved very badly."

Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, acknowledged the department should have been paying closer attention to what the ArmorGroup guards were doing at their living quarters near the embassy in Kabul, one of the nation's most important diplomatic outposts.

"There is no question we should have done more," Kennedy said. "We simply made a mistake. We assumed that the contractor was going to be managing its conduct at the guard camp."

Brinkley and Kennedy insisted security at the embassy has never been compromised. They also said the employees responsible for the misconduct are being disciplined. An inquiry is under way and State Department investigators are looking for possible criminal conduct.

So far, 21 personnel have been fired or resigned. However, 16 of those moves have occurred since Sept. 1, when an independent watchdog group made public photos and a report detailing the ArmorGroup's failings in Afghanistan.

Lurid parties
Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, says she has received photos from company whistle-blowers indicating the lurid parties were taking place as far back as January 2008.

Brian said ArmorGroup employees have been warned by their colleagues in Afghanistan not to speak out. She said they have awakened and found posters of rats on their doors with messages threatening them and their families.

Brinkley acknowledged that Wackenhut and ArmorGroup erred by waiting nearly two weeks before telling the State Department about an alcohol-related incident in August that proved far more serious than company officials first believed.

The onsite manager for ArmorGroup counseled nine guards after they got drunk at a bar near their living quarters in Kabul on Aug. 10, according to Brinkley.

But after the photos surfaced showing guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol, they realized they made a mistake by not alerting U.S. officials.

"In retrospect, we were wrong in not notifying the State Department," Brinkley said.

Contract under review
Kennedy, the State Department's management chief, said no decision will be made on whether to terminate the contract with ArmorGroup until the investigation is completed.

Members of the commission pressed Kennedy to be more aggressive, saying the evidence already available is enough to warrant firing ArmorGroup, which was awarded the $189 million contract to protect the embassy in March 2007.

Commissioner Clark Ervin asked Kennedy to pledge to terminate the contract if the investigation proves all the allegations to be true.

Kennedy refused to commit, saying the inquiry needs to run its course. However, Kennedy added, "We are seeing a very, very serious case being made for termination."

Testing time for Obama on Iran, N.Korea

2009-09-15T09:32:00.004+06:30

Direct talks? Administration tries to keep expectations low

By Robert Burns / AP National Security Writer | WASHINGTON - Suddenly the door has opened for President Barack Obama to put his long-shot diplomatic strategy to the test and fulfill a campaign pledge to negotiate directly with North Korea and Iran.

Casting aside preconditions that former President George W. Bush had set for talking with countries he called part of an "axis of evil," Obama is making a play for progress where none has been achieved lately. At stake with both Iran and North Korea is the risk of an eventual nuclear confrontation.

The administration is trying to keep expectations low, saying it has no illusions that either North Korea or Iran will suddenly soften their stance and give up their nuclear ambitions. But it insists that diplomacy is the only realistic hope for heading off a potential nuclear arms race in the Mideast and in Asia.

In the case of Iran, the administration seems ready to argue that talks are a no-lose proposition.

"If Iran is unwilling to discuss their illicit nuclear weapons program, I think all that does is strengthen the hand of the international community," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.

His remark appeared to allude to the prospect of building international support for new sanctions against Iran in the event that Tehran remains unwilling to negotiate an end to its nuclear program.

In the few days since the administration declared itself ready to talk to both Iran and North Korea, the response on Capitol Hill has been less than overwhelmingly supportive.

The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, blasted the administration Monday.

"Iran and North Korea are actively working against critical U.S. security interests and allies and endangering global peace and security," she said. "They are among the world's worst human rights abusers. Yet, what is the U.S. response? Unconditional negotiations and unending offers of incentives."

Shifting landscape
In some respects the negotiating landscape has shifted since Obama took office, with uncertain implications for whether the president stands much of a chance of succeeding where his predecessor could not.

Iran, which denies U.S. and international suspicions that its nuclear program is meant to produce a bomb, insists its program is nonnegotiable. But last week it pronounced itself ready for talks on a broader agenda, and an initial meeting is to be held Oct. 1 — the first such forum in more than one year.

The Obama administration had expected Iran to make an overture earlier this summer but that was before the Islamic Republic's tainted June presidential election and the regime's harsh crackdown on election protests. That has raised questions about the regime's ability to deliver on any negotiated agreement.

Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, which favors dialogue with Tehran, said Monday that the U.S. and its international negotiating partners — Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — should make human rights a key part of the coming talks, particularly in light of the postelection violence.

"Failing to raise human rights in the talks would send the Iranian government a dangerous message of international indifference to the plight of the Iranian people," Parsi said.

The Obama administration, echoing the demands of the Bush White House, insists that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment. Tehran says it wants to use enrichment technology to create nuclear fuel for electricity generation, but the U.S. and others suspect that its real intent is to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

Ray Takeyh, an adviser on Iran policy at the State Department before joining the Council on Foreign Relations think tank two weeks ago, said it appears unlikely Iranian leaders are ready to yield to outside pressure.

"I suspect they are not in the mood for compromise and concession," Takeyh said.

North Korea, which claims it already has a nuclear arsenal and threatens to use it if attacked, shut the door last spring on denuclearization talks with the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. Last month, however, it announced it was ready to talk — but only to the U.S., excluding the others.

And now the Obama administration says it is prepared to take up the North Korean offer, although Kelly told reporters at the State Department on Monday that no final decision has been made.

‘Greatest risk’
Chester A. Crocker, who was assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1981 to 1989, wrote in the New York Times on Monday that the administration must be prepared for any outcome with Iran and North Korea.

"By far the greatest risk of engagement is that it may succeed," wrote Crocker, now a professor of strategic studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. "If we succeed in changing the position of the other country's decision-makers, we then must decide whether we will take `yes' for an answer and reciprocate their moves with steps of our own."

US senator visits Burma to engage with regime

2009-08-15T20:10:00.002+06:30

photo: AP / MRTV via APTN

JUSTIN McCURRY / Irish Times | THE FIRST visit to Burma by a senior US official for more than a decade has triggered speculation that the Obama administration will attempt to steer the regime towards a new era of engagement.

Jim Webb, a Democratic senator from Virginia, arrived in Burma yesterday, days after the country’s junta sentenced the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to 18 months’ house arrest.

Senator Webb, who served in the Reagan administration but is now considered a close ally of Barack Obama, is expected to meet the country’s leader, Than Shwe, in the country’s remote capital, Naypyidaw, today.

The outcome of his visit – part of a five-nation tour of Asia – is expected to influence the White House as it considers new approaches to the problem of Burma’s appalling record on human rights.

“If the meeting takes place it will be the first time that a senior American official has ever met with Burma’s top leader,” Senator Webb’s office said in a statement.

Given his public support for a policy of engagement with Burma’s generals, Senator Webb’s visit could be the precursor to a break by Mr Obama with the more punitive approach favoured by Britain and the EU.

That Than Shwe has agreed to a meeting suggests that a slight thaw in relations – soured by the Aung San Suu Kyi trial – is not out of the question.

The senator, a former boxer and marine who served in Vietnam, is expected to request a meeting with the Burmese opposition leader, who began her latest period of detention at her Rangoon mansion on Tuesday.

He is also expected to demand the release of John Yettaw, an American whose unauthorised visit to Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakeside mansion in May triggered the trial. The 53-year-old from Missouri was given seven years of hard labour amid concerns over his health.

It is unlikely that Senator Webb’s requests will be granted, however. “It is impossible that Mr Yettaw will be sent back with the visiting senator,” his lawyer, Khin Maung Oo, said. “I think my client will finally be deported, but not immediately.”

Senator Webb drew criticism from three Burmese dissident groups, which expressed amazement that the visit came so soon after the verdict against Aung San Suu Kyi.

In an open letter to the senator, the All Burma Monks’ Alliance, the 88 Generation Students, and the All Burma Federation of Student Unions wrote: “We are concerned that the military regime will manipulate and exploit your visit.”

Suggestions that the Obama administration might be about to relax sanctions introduced in 1990 – the year the junta ignored the opposition’s election victory – prompted an angry response from several prominent US politicians earlier this year.

In a letter to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, 17 congressmen said Than Shwe’s regime “continues to perpetuate crimes against humanity and war crimes so severe that Burma has been called ‘Southeast Asia’s Darfur’”.

But Senator Webb, who chairs the Senate foreign relations sub-committee on East Asia and Pacific affairs, countered that years of sanctions and condemnation had failed. He said: “What I think we should be doing in Burma is trying to open up diplomatic avenues where you can have confidence builders . . . and through that process work toward some way where you can remove sanctions.”

Last month, Mrs Clinton suggested that the US might be willing to soften its stance in return for Aung San Suu Kyi’s freedom. – (Guardian service)

7 dead, 91 hurt in Taliban attack on NATO HQ

2009-08-15T20:02:00.003+06:30

Western soldiers wounded as suicide bomber strikes heavily guarded site

Getty Images

A car burns after a suicide bombing near the main gate of the NATO headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomb exploded Saturday outside the main gate of NATO's headquarters five days before Afghanistan's presidential election, killing seven and wounding 91 in the biggest attack in the Afghan capital in six months.

The bomber evaded several rings of Afghan police and detonated his explosives on the doorstep of the international military headquarters, an assault possibly aimed at sending the message that the Taliban can attack anywhere as Afghans gear up for their second-ever direct presidential election. Militants have warned Afghans not to vote and have threatened to attack voting sites.

The NATO headquarters — where top commander U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is based — sits beside the U.S. Embassy and shares the same street as the presidential palace. The explosion was the first major attack in Kabul since February, when eight Taliban militants struck three government buildings simultaneously in the heart of the city, an assault that killed 20 people and the eight assailants.

Afghanistan has braced for attacks ahead of the election. International workers in the country were planning on working from home over the next week or had been encouraged to leave the country. U.S., NATO and Afghan troops were working to protect voting sites, particularly in regions where militants hold sway.

'Not afraid'
President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack and said Afghans knew the importance of Thursday's election.

"The enemies of Afghanistan, by conducting such attacks, are trying to create fear among the people as we get close to the election," Karzai said in a statement. He said Afghans "are not afraid of any threats, and they will go to cast their votes."

Bloodied and dazed Afghans wandered the street after Saturday's blast, which rattled the capital and sent a black plume of smoke skyward. Children — many of whom congregate outside the NATO gate to sell gum to Westerners — were among the wounded. Windows of nearby antique shops were shattered and blood smeared the ground.

The Taliban claimed responsibility and said the target was the NATO headquarters and the U.S. Embassy some 150 yards down the street. A top Kabul police official blamed al-Qaida.

Brig. Gen. E. Tremblay, the spokesman for the NATO-led force, said some soldiers in the International Security Assistance Force were wounded in the 8:35 a.m. blast. He did not say how many. The explosion occurred 30 yards from NATO's front gate, he said. Pointing to the civilian casualties, Tremblay said the Taliban were "indiscriminately killing civilians."

Afghan security forces stopped the vehicle in front of NATO headquarters, and then the bomber detonated the explosives, Tremblay said.

"The security measures in place have stopped cold the bombers as planned," he said, calling the latest attack an example of the "residual risk" that remained despite the safety measures taken. "It's very difficult to stop a suicide bomber."

The blast killed seven Afghans and wounded 91, Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said.

'Victims everywhere'
Four Afghan soldiers and Awa Alam Nuristani, a member of parliament and President Hamid Karzai's campaign manager for women, were among the wounded, the ministry said.

"I was drinking tea in our office when a big explosion happened," said Abdul Fahim, an Afghan in his mid-20s who sustained leg injuries. "I lay on the ground and then I saw wounded victims everywhere, including police and civilians."

The chief of Kabul's criminal investigation department, Abdul Ghafar Sayadzada, said 600 pounds of explosives were used, and that because of the amount he suspected al-Qaida was involved. The attacker passed three police checkpoints, Sayadzada said.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the blast and said the bomb contained 1,100 pounds of explosives. Mujahid at first said the bomber was on foot, then later called back and said it was a suicide car bomb attack.

Barriers
The attack falls in line with increasingly spectacular and sophisticated strikes carried out by Afghanistan militants. The Taliban have carried out several coordinated attacks in the last several months with multiple teams of insurgents assaulting government sites. Military analysts have said the increased sophistication comes from training by al-Qaida operatives.

NATO headquarters has several large, cement blocks and steel gates that prevent anyone from reaching the entrance, and the bomber was not able to breach those barriers. Afghanistan's Transportation Ministry lies across the street from NATO headquarters.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said a suicide bomber named Ahmadullah from the Bagrami district of Kabul province carried out Saturday's attack.

A driver from the nearby Defense Ministry said he took at least 12 people to the hospital. Most were seriously wounded, said the driver, who spoke to an Associated Press reporter at the scene but didn't want to give his name because of safety concerns.

Kabul has been relatively quiet over the last half year, though militants have launched a barrage of rockets into the capital this month, most of which landed harmlessly in open spaces.

Security has increased over the last several weeks in preparation for Thursday's vote.

Earthquakes shake Tokyo area, Indian Ocean

2009-08-11T11:11:00.004+06:30

Trains are halted and nuclear reactors are shut down for safety checks

The shoulder of a highway is caved in after a magnitude 6.6 earthquake hit the area of Makinohara, west of Tokyo on Tuesday.

NBC News | PORT BLAIR, India - A powerful earthquake hit Tokyo and nearby areas shortly after dawn Tuesday, halting trains and forcing two nuclear reactors to be shut down for safety checks. At least seven people suffered minor injuries.

The U.S. Geological Survey said another, unrelated quake with a 7.6 magnitude hit the Indian Ocean about 160 miles north of Port Blair in India's Andaman Islands. A tsunami watch was called for India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh. The caution was later lifted without any tsunami being recorded.

On Dec. 26, 2004, about 230,000 people were killed in a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered a tsunami. Tuesday's Andaman Islands' quake was 20.6 miles deep, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

In Japan's magnitude-6.5 temblor, at least seven people were slightly hurt, the National Police Agency said. Public broadcaster NHK reported 43 were injured.

Quake later downgraded
Japan's Meteorological Agency — which later downgraded the quake from 6.6 — also issued a tsunami warning, but that was later lifted. The quake was centered off Suruga Bay, southwest of Tokyo, at a depth of 12 miles.

A small increase of waves of up to 23 inches was observed along the coastline of Yaizu city, the agency said.

Central Japan Railway Co. has suspended operations of Shinkansen bullet trains but resumed service, but some local trains were still out of service, the company said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters the government set up a task force at the prime minister's office.

"We are trying to assess the extent of damage as quickly as possible," Kawamura said. "We'll do our best to rescue those who were affected."

Local trains and two reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant were temporarily halted for safety checks. No damage was reported, however. Reactors are automatically shut down whenever a quake of a certain strength is registered.

NHK said a 5-year-old boy suffered a leg injury when he was hit by a falling TV set. Small landslides were reported in the town of Nishi Izu, but there were no injuries, said town official Mieko Hayama.

Japan has recently been hit by heavy typhoon rains, and officials warned residents in mountainous areas to be cautious because the ground may be loose and landslides may be generated by the quake or aftershocks.

NHK also reported two older people were hit by falling objects, and another tripped and fell and was slightly injured.

Touring the coastal areas
Kinichi Tashiro, an emergency official at the Yaizu city fire station, said officials were touring the coastal areas in the city to monitor the situation, but he has not received any reports of damage.

"I was in the bathroom just as the quake hit. It shook rather violently," Tashiro said in a televised interview with NHK. Tashiro said there was no damage to his home and observed no major problem in the neighborhood as he rushed to the office.

A magnitude 6.9 quake rattled the region Sunday, but caused no damage or casualties. The U.S. Geological Survey measured it at magnitude 7.1.

Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and experts believe Tokyo has a 90 percent chance of being hit by a major quake over the next 50 years.

In 1995, a magnitude-7.2 quake in the western port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people.

Prison transfer for detained opposition member

2009-08-11T10:57:00.000+06:30

by Phanida | Chiang Mai (Mizzima) - Kyaw Khaing, an Arakanese Member of Parliament, elected in the 1990 election, was transferred from Thandwe prison in Arakan state to Thayet prison in Magwe division in central Burma on Sunday.

Kyaw Khaing (87), who is also chairman of the organizing committee of the National League for Democracy, Taungup Township branch and vice-chairman of the organizing committee of the Arakan State NLD, was sentenced to two years in prison on June 13, on defamation charges.

“At about 1:30 p.m. (local time) yesterday, Kyaw Khaing was shifted from Thandwe prison on a highway bus,” a local resident of Thandwe town, who saw Kyaw Khaing being taken away, told Mizzima.

In early May, the vice-chairman of the NLD Township organizing committee Than Pe and Myo Myint, filed a lawsuit against Kyaw Khaing charging him with defamation. He was sentenced to two years in prison on July 13.

The two men were unhappy with Kyaw Khaing as he wrote a letter to explain to them the reason for collecting donation in the name of the NLD.

Kyaw Khaing was earlier arrested for his involvement in the monk-led protests in September 2007 and sentenced to seven years in prison but he was later released from the Thandwe prison after serving just a month’s term.

Obama, Calderon meet at N. America summit

2009-08-10T08:45:00.003+06:30

Friendly 45-minute meeting touches on trade, swine flu and drug violence

Alex Brandon / AP

President Barack Obama, left, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon meet in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Sunday. The two leaders are taking part in the North American Leaders Summit.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | GUADALAJARA, Mexico - President Barack Obama pressed for a new tone in the United States' relationship with Mexico but found no immediate progress Sunday on the divisions between him and Mexican President Felipe Calderon over of the pace of U.S. drug-fighting aid and a ban on Mexican trucks north of the border.

Obama kicked off his second trip to Mexico as president with a friendly 45-minute meeting with Calderon that touched on the vast trade relationship between their two countries, their cooperation on swine flu and the violent Mexican gangs dominating the drug trade on both sides of the border. Their talks came before the start of a lightning-quick three-way summit between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Often called the "Three Amigos" summit, the meeting of Obama, Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper began over dinner at a cultural institution in this town near the mountains. The summit's formal talks, the fifth for the three countries, were taking place Monday, followed by a meeting-capping joint appearance before reporters at midday.

During the separate sit-down between Obama and Calderon, the Mexican leader raised his concerns about the speed of implementation of the United States' three-year, $1.4 billion drug-fighting package known as the Merida Initiative. One $100 million installment is being delayed over rising concerns among some in Congress about the Mexican army's abuses.

The U.S. law requires Congress to withhold some funding unless the State Department reports Mexico is not violating human rights in the process of its anti-cartel crackdown that started in 2006.

Obama told Calderon that human rights is a major priority for him, but also assured him that the State Department is working to prepare a report that recognizes all Mexico's efforts to prevent abuses, said a senior administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in order to more freely describe private meetings.

Drug violence has killed more than 11,000 people since Mexico launched its crackdown. Mexican cities are living essentially under siege, and the killings are spilling over the border into the United States and as far as Canada.

Quizzed on Mexican truckers travel
Calderon also quizzed Obama on his earlier promise to restore a canceled pilot program that had allowed Mexican truckers to travel into the United States, the official said.

The North American Free Trade Agreement requires the United States to grant Mexican trucks full access to its highways. A 2007 pilot program allowed some trucks, but facing opposition from U.S. labor unions and consumer groups, Obama signed a spending bill that included a ban on spending for the program.

Mexico retaliated by imposing tariffs on dozens of U.S. products ranging from fruit and wine to washing machines.

Obama told Calderon that he would work "to try to move forward" but also said that Congress has "legitimate safety concerns" about Mexican trucks, the official said.

Outside the sprawling colonial-era building where they met in Mexico's second-largest city, caravans of heavily armed federal agents patrolled the streets. Dozens of police carrying riot gear manned roadblocks meant to keep protesters away.

Summit sparks protests
About 400 people marched outside the summit on Sunday to protest the negative affects of free trade and to demand benefits for retired Mexican laborers who worked in the U.S.

Caravans of heavily armed federal agents patrolled the streets. Dozens of police carrying riot gear manned roadblocks meant to keep protesters away from the center where Obama, Felipe Calderon and Harper are meeting.

Several Mexican, U.S. and Canadian groups announced they would hold an alternate summit to discuss the "15 years of NAFTA's economic failures," referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement enacted in 1994 to remove trade barriers among the three nations.

NAFTA has been criticized for putting small Mexican farmers out of business and spurring waves of immigration to the U.S., as well as causing American jobs to move overseas.

The protesters also demanded immigration reform in the U.S. and that Mexican laborers in a World War II-era guest-worker program receive the money withheld from their paychecks.

Swine flu will major topic
U.S.-Mexico relations went on a rollercoaster ride during the tenure of former President George W. Bush, driven by a divide over the Iraq war, the United States' building of a border fence, and Bush's failure to secure immigration reform. While Obama has, like Bush, emphasized beefed-up border security, he has pledged to renew efforts to push through an immigration overhaul including a citizenship path for illegal immigrants.

And during his April visit, Obama made a welcome acknowledgment to Mexicans that Americans share the blame for violence south of border because of drug consumption and gun trafficking.

A major topic of discussion between Obama and Calderon — and for the three leaders on Monday — will be the now-global swine flu epidemic believed to have started in Mexico in April just before Obama's last trip, unbeknownst to the White House. An Obama administration aide returned home sick.

But what could have become a diplomatic downer turned into a bright spot.

Obama was never in danger, the aide and his family recovered, and the two nations cooperated extensively on the flu outbreak through the spring and beyond. The United States earned huge points with its southern neighbor for not joining the countries banning flights, halting trade and taking other actions that Mexico considered unfairly punitive.

Obama, Calderon and Harper will look for ways to build on that earlier partnership to handle an expected new wave of cases during North America's upcoming flu season. John Brennan, Obama's chief homeland security aide, said it is as important to further link up health officials and ready vaccine and antiviral supplies as it is for the three leaders to publicly reinforce a determination not to panic when cases arise.

"There are people who are going to be getting sick in the fall and die," Brennan said. "We want to make sure that we do everything possible to ensure the continuation of commerce, transportation and trade between the three countries."

‘Complex and multifaceted’
America's first- and third-largest trade relationships are with Canada and Mexico. All three are partners in NAFTA, the largest free-trade zone in the world. Closing borders or restricting travel would be very costly for families and businesses on all sides of the borders, an important consideration given the limping economy and the fact that health experts see such actions as pointless in containing the flu's spread.

Bush kicked off the trilateral tradition in 2005 with the first summit held near his Texas ranch.

Peter DeShazo, a former State Department official for Western Hemisphere affairs, said Canada and Mexico are vital to the U.S. economy and security, making regular conversations at the highest levels a must. "These relationships are so complex and multifaceted," said DeShazo, who directs the Americas Program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The U.S. neighbors will want Obama to explain where America's economic recovery is going because both countries saw their own fortunes fall as a result of problems in the U.S. Obama will hear complaints from Calderon and Harper about "Buy American" requirements in the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

Climate change is a priority, too.

The three leaders also are expected to take a joint stand on a recent problem in their hemisphere — the June coup in Honduras that saw President Manuel Zelaya ousted by the military.

Obama has no separate session with Harper alone. The Canadian leader will see the president on Sept. 16 in Washington.

Crash over Hudson exposes crowded airspace

2009-08-10T08:37:00.003+06:30

Some are calling for more regulation of congested, popular corridor

CHIP EAST / Reuters

Police stand guard in front of a helicopter wrapped in a blue tarp after it was recovered from the Hudson River, in Hoboken, N.J., on Sunday.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | NEW YORK - Flying a small plane above the Hudson River can feel like ducking into a crowded, urban canyon — with towering skyscrapers on each side and more than a dozen helicopters and planes all buzzing lower than the nearby Empire State Building.

The city's worst air disaster in eight years has drawn calls for more regulation of the air corridor over the Hudson, which is less than three-quarters of a mile wide at the site where a helicopter and small plane collided midair. It serves as an air highway for helicopters, police patrols and small planes flown by pilots of varying ability.

"That's not a lot of space," said Ray Adams, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union at Newark (N.J.) Liberty International Airport. "And it's not unusual at all for us to have 10 to 20 aircraft between the George Washington Bridge and the Statue of Liberty."

Pilots are largely free to choose their own route, radioing their position periodically but not communicating regularly with air traffic controllers. Planes often fly as low as 500 feet to get a good look at the Statue of Liberty.

"So, what you have is a lot of helicopters. You've got the sightseeing tours. You have police helicopters. You have the weekend warriors who fly up and down the river," said Justin Green, an aviation attorney and former military pilot who has flown the route.

"All these airplanes are flying 1,000 feet or lower, and a lot of the pilots are up there to see the sights, so they may not be seeing and avoiding things as they should be," he said.

‘Shooting the gap’
Pilots must stay under 1,100 feet to avoid straying into jetways used by commercial aircraft. They also aren't allowed to fly over Manhattan's tall buildings or stray into restricted zones around several major airports.

"What makes it kind of hairy is that, to stay out of all the restricted airspace ... you are kind of shooting the gap," Green said.

Planes and helicopters have blind spots just like cars do, making it difficult at times to spot an approaching aircraft, said Stanley Ferber, a flight instructor from Brooklyn.

"The only way to compensate is to have your head constantly on a swivel, moving your head around and scanning all parts of the sky," Ferber said.

Separation of airspace possible
In Saturday's deadly crash, the plane approached from the north and clipped the helicopter from behind, witnesses said. A warning from a pilot on the ground apparently came too late.

The collision may lead to the separation of helicopters and planes in the congested airspace above the New York City, said Hubert "Skip" Smith, an associate professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at Penn State University.

"There probably needs to be more regulation," Smith said. "Restricting the helicopters to 500 feet and below and having the airplanes fly between 500 and 1500 feet would probably help by separating these two distinctly different types of air traffic. I know that's what the helicopter pilots want."

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer called for toughening flight restrictions over the Hudson, and New York City Council Member Gale Brewer said tourist helicopters should be banned from the corridor.

"All of us in this region also need to take a long and serious look at the circumstances surrounding this crash to ensure that significant air traffic over the Hudson doesn't come at the risk of the safety of New Jersey families who live along the riverfront," New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine said.

The National Transportation Safety Board will look into the congestion issues, Chairman Debbie Hersman said Sunday.

Accidents are rare
But Mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself a recreational pilot, has argued that keeping the skies open to general aviation aircraft is necessary for the city's economy.

After Saturday's crash, he said that cutting off flights is "not something that anybody wants" and referred to the city's "commercial interests" in catering to the tour helicopters that take off daily from the West Side helipad.

Accidents are rare, he said, despite many daily flights. The city's heliports alone handle an estimated 88,000 takeoffs and landings a year.

"It is a crowded, busy area. And generally pilots that fly in this area are well trained and they certainly have plenty of practice," Bloomberg said. "When the roads are crowded and going fast, you really want to pay attention, and pilots here typically do."

But other accidents have happened in the crowded airspace around Manhattan. New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor died in 2006 when they smashed into an apartment tower while flying a popular sightseeing route around Manhattan.

After that crash, federal officials banned all small, fixed-wing planes from flying over the East River unless the pilot had specific permission from air traffic controllers.

China: Plane diverted to Afghanistan by threat

2009-08-10T08:32:00.001+06:30

The aircraft had been scheduled to land in western region of Xinjiang

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | BEIJING - A plane scheduled to land in China's western region of Xinjiang that was rocked by ethnic riots last month was diverted to southern Afghanistan by a bomb threat, state media said Sunday.

Xinhua News Agency did not identify the airline or the type of plane, but said the airport in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi had been told to not to allow the plane to land.

Urumqi was the scene of the worst ethnic violence in China in decades when deadly rioting killed 197 people and injured more than 1,700, according to official count.

Xinhua had earlier reported that the plane had been hijacked, but said it had landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, after a bomb threat.

However, a press officer for NATO forces in Afghanistan, which control the Kandahar airport, said the alliance had received no report of a plane forced to land there.

"I doubt that anything like that has taken place based on the information we have right now," U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo said. "That's a significant activity. If something that significant happens we would know about it."

A Xinjiang regional government duty officer, who refused to give his name, said he had not received any information about the incident, while calls to the region's public security bureau rang unanswered.

Calls to the Urumqi airport's information counter also rang unanswered.

The government has said that Urumqi has slowly been returning to normal since the rioting erupted on July 5 after police stopped a protest by ethnic Uighur residents. The Uighurs went on a rampage, smashing windows, burning cars and beating Han Chinese — the nation's dominant ethnic group. Two days later, the Han took to the streets and attacked Uighurs.

The government said the violence was the work of terrorists, separatists and foreign forces as part of a plot to carve up China.

In early August, an Internet message purportedly from the leader of an Islamic group fighting Chinese rule in a western province urged Muslims worldwide to attack Chinese interests in retaliation for what it called the oppression of minority Uighurs.

Strong earthquake shakes Tokyo area

2009-08-10T08:27:00.002+06:30

No immediate reports of injuries or damage

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | TOKYO - A strong earthquake shook Japan's capital and surrounding areas Sunday, halting trains and a professional baseball game, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

There was no threat of a tsunami from the quake, which was centered at a depth of 188 miles (303 kilometers) in the Izu islands off the eastern coast of Japan, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The USGS measured the quake at magnitude 7.1, while the Japan Meteorological Agency put it at 6.9.

The quake, which rattled furniture and walls in Tokyo homes, hit at 7:56 p.m. (1056 GMT) and shook the capital region, including Ibaraki, Saitama, Tochigi and Chiba prefectures, the Japanese agency said.

A baseball game in Yokohama between the Yokohama Bay Stars and Chunichi Dragons was stopped temporarily by the umpire when the quake struck. Some high-speed bullet trains also were halted, but began running again after the shaking stopped, public broadcaster NHK said.

Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and experts believe Tokyo has a 90 percent chance of being hit by a major quake over the next 50 years.

In 1995, a magnitude-7.2 quake in the western port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people.

Indian official says 43 people killed in landslide

2009-08-10T08:25:00.002+06:30

Extensive deforestation has made region in north prone to landslides

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | LUCKNOW, India - Landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 43 people in three remote villages in northern India, a police official said Sunday.

Twenty bodies were pulled from the debris after the landslide Saturday buried the villages in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand state, said S.M. Shamim, a paramilitary force commander.

He said 43 people "were buried alive under the debris."

Police and volunteers were digging through mud and rocks Sunday to recover the bodies of 23 others, he said.

Pithoragarh, in the Himalayan foothills, is about 310 miles northeast of the Indian capital, New Delhi. Extensive deforestation has made the region prone to landslides during monsoon rains.

Arrests of corrupt U.S. border police rise

2009-08-10T08:12:00.003+06:30

Charges range from drug trafficking to immigrant smuggling

David McNew / Getty Images file

Clouds of dust kicked up by border patrol vehicles hang in the air along the U.S.-Mexico border fence on July 30 near the rural town of Campo, some 60 miles east of San Diego.

By Martha Mendoza and Christopher Sherman | McALLEN, Texas - Corruption along the U.S.-Mexican border takes many forms. It can start as simply as a smuggler's $50 gift to the child of a reluctant federal agent, quickly escalating to out-and-out bribes. "Everyone does it," the agent, now in prison, recalls telling himself. Other times, county sheriffs greedily grab thousands from drug dealers. In a few instances, traffickers even place members in the applicant pool for sensitive border protection jobs.

An Associated Press investigation has found U.S. law officers who work the border are being charged with criminal corruption in numbers not seen before, as drug and immigrant smugglers use money and sometimes sex to buy protection, and internal investigators crack down.

Based on Freedom of Information Act requests, interviews with sentenced agents and a review of court records, the AP tallied corruption-related convictions against more than 80 enforcement officials at all levels — federal, state and local — since 2007, shortly after Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels that peddle up to $39 billion worth of drugs in the United States each year.

U.S. officials have long pointed to Mexico's rampantly corrupt cops and broken judicial system, but Calderon told the AP this isn't just a Mexican problem.

"To get drugs into the United States, the one you need to corrupt is the American authority, the American customs, the American police — not the Mexican. And that's a subject, by the way, which hasn't been addressed with sincerity," the Mexican president said. "I'm waging my battle against corruption among Mexican authorities and we're risking everything to clean our house, but I think there also needs to be a good cleaning on the other side of the border."

‘Weakness in the armor’
In fact, U.S. prosecutors have been taking notice. Drug traffickers look "for weaknesses in the armor," said former prosecutor Yolanda de Leon in Cameron County, Texas.

One such weakness was her own county's Sheriff Conrado Cantu. With his thick mustache, ample belly and Western hat, Cantu was a backslapping natural in the political machine of Cameron County, population 335,000. The county includes Brownsville, Texas, directly across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico.

In no time, Cantu rose from constable to sheriff, a job he later acknowledged he was unqualified to hold. In 2005, he pleaded guilty to federal charges of running a criminal enterprise involved in extortion, drug trafficking and bribery. He's now serving a 24-year sentence for extorting money from drug traffickers and illegal gambling operations.

"If the opportunity came along, he would take it," said de Leon.

Not all corruption charges that turned up in AP's checks were related to drug trafficking. The researched cases involve agents helping smuggle immigrants, drugs or other contraband, taking wads of money or sexual favors in exchange — or simply allowing entry to someone whose paperwork isn't up to snuff, all part of the daily border traffic that has politicians demanding that the U.S.-Mexico border be secured.

Court records show corrupt officials along the 2,100-mile U.S.-Mexico border have included local police and elected sheriffs, and officers with such U.S. Department of Homeland Security agencies as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol. Some have even been National Guardsmen temporarily called in to help while the Border Patrol expanded its ranks.

‘High-threat environment’
As Calderon sent thousands of soldiers to northern Mexico to stop the gruesome cartel violence and clean out corrupt police departments, CBP, the largest U.S. law enforcement agency, boosted its border forces by 44 percent or 6,907 additional officers and agents on the southwest border.

At the same time, CBP saw the number of its officers charged with corruption-related crimes nearly triple, from eight cases in fiscal 2007 to 21 the following year — and began to crack down.

"Day in, day out, someone in our agency is approached and says no, but we operate in this high-threat environment," said James Tomsheck, assistant commissioner for internal affairs at CBP. "The reality of it is we are deeply concerned."

In the past 10 months, 20 agents from CBP alone have been charged with a corruption-related crime. At that pace, the organization will set a new record for in-house corruption; 90 employees have been charged with corrupt acts since October 2004. Agency officials expect those cases to continue to climb: There are 63 open criminal investigations — including corruption cases — against CBP employees.

At least as unsettling were the prospective agents who never got to commit their crimes: Four applicants for jobs in federal border law enforcement were not hired when polygraph tests and background checks confirmed they were infiltrators from drug trafficking operations, authorities said.

Such in-depth checks are conducted on only about 10 percent of applicants for border agent jobs, though such scrutiny will eventually be made standard for all applicants, according to Tomsheck. Meantime, officials are left to wonder: Are other gangsters working undercover for agencies charged with protecting the U.S. border?

More checks in-house
CBP had more than 2,000 in-house discipline cases during the past three years, according to records obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act. Most were minor, but about 100 reflected more serious, corruption-related incidents, many of which were later prosecuted.

The jump in corruption cases comes as CBP has increased its team of internal investigators from five three years ago to 220 today.

CBP's own investigation of corruption cases showed little correlation between minor disciplinary problems and the more serious instances of bribery and malfeasance.

"Virtually none of the employees arrested for corruption are employees that have serious misconduct issues," Tomsheck said. "Actively corrupt employees do everything they can to stay below the radar screen."

It can be heartbreaking to see agents switch sides for small amounts of money, said U.S. Attorney Tim Johnson, whose turf covers a long stretch of border from the Gulf of Mexico to Laredo, Texas. But, Johnson and other federal prosecutors say, "these cases will always have a priority" and must be prosecuted "to the fullest extent," to emphasize that corruption will not be tolerated.

"You can't allow people who work within the law enforcement community to compromise our mission. We would just lose control of everything down there," he said.

It's a lesson Mexico learned the hard way, ignoring for years corrupt police until Calderon began to replace them with military personnel.

In Texas, which has more than half the U.S. border with Mexico, the commission that oversees state and local law enforcement officers reported that criminal misconduct cases were opened against 515 officers in fiscal 2007 and 550 officers in fiscal 2008. Some form of disciplinary action was lodged against 324 and 331 peace officer licenses, respectively, in those years.

"The cartels increasingly recruit law enforcement officers on both sides of the border," Steve McCraw, then Texas's homeland security chief, told state lawmakers earlier this year. "It's not just a Mexico problem because of the amount of money involved. And as we've increased presence between the ports (of entry), there's an increased desire to recruit law enforcement personnel to move across the bridge or use them between the ports."

Low-level agent is ‘incredible bargain’
In-house CBP data shows corrupt agents fall into two categories — recent hires who are charged very quickly, indicating they took the jobs intending to break the law, and veteran agents who have worked for the agency for a decade or more before succumbing to the offers.

"From the Mexican cartels' point of view, it is cheaper to pay an official several thousand dollars to allow a load of narcotics to pass by than it is to risk having the shipment seized," Scott Stewart and Fred Burton, vice presidents of global intelligence firm Stratfor, wrote in a recent report. "Such bribes are simply part of the cost of doing business — and in the big picture, even a low-level agent can be an incredible bargain."

One such officer, a CBP agent convicted of taking money to smuggle illegal immigrants, was over his head with credit card debt, behind on child-support payments, about to lose his truck. His 10-year-old, whom he had taken to the mall for the day, wanted a football he couldn't afford.

That's when a friendly, familiar Mexican man pulled a $50 bill from a thick wallet and handed it to the agent's son, who snatched the money and dashed off to the Dallas Cowboys Pro Shop.

The father related the story in the visiting room of a federal prison in California where he is serving a four-year term.

"I was like, 'Wait son, hang on!' but he was gone, so happy with that money," said the former agent, whom prison officials allowed the AP to interview on condition of anonymity because convicted law enforcement officers are considered potential targets.

That was how it began, the ex-agent continued. A few weeks later, the Mexican man suggested that the officer let a man through his pedestrian checkpoint early one morning without asking questions. He'd get $5,000 for his trouble.

"I thought, 'Naaah, I can't do that.' Then I thought, 'Hell, my life's a mess. Everyone does it. If I'm caught I'll just say the guy got past me. I'll do it once. I could use the money,'" he recalled.

The cash came in handy. He bought clothes for his kids, jerseys for a youth team he coached; he made his truck payment, caught up on credit card bills.

The next time was easier, if less lucrative: $1,500 a person.

Nervously smoothing his prison-green scrubs, he said, "I really planned to stop." But then another offer came, even while colleagues warned him the FBI was snooping around. And then a woman he had illegally passed through named him when she was caught by an honest agent.

He was convicted for passing one person through. He paid $5,000 in fines in addition to the prison term.

"You want to know how many times I did this?" he asked. "Sixty-six. I kept a tally."

Lines blur in border communities
The men and women who were caught described their jobs as prestigious and well paid for the small border towns where they grew up. An entry-level CBP officer earns $37,000 a year in Laredo, and within a year is likely paid $41,000, well above the local average annual income of $25,000.

In border communities, the demarcation between countries is insignificant. People live on one side, work on the other; have a favorite barber on one side, but buy groceries on the other. The traffic is heavy, and constant.

Some of the border authorities were born in Mexico or are related to Mexican nationals. So do you let a colleague's Mexican aunt cross the border without a visa for a family birthday party? Or wave through a loaded truck that belongs to your bosses' brother-in-law without looking inside? Some agents said yes.

And so did some state and local officers. The deputy commander of a narcotics task force was caught in a sting operation protecting what he believed were loads of drugs moving through Zapata County; others have shaken down drug traffickers moving product through their turf.

In October, FBI agents arrested Starr County Sheriff Reymundo Guerra at his office as part of a sweep dubbed "Operation Carlito's Weigh." Guerra, the chief law enforcement officer for the border county of 62,000 people, had spent a decade as sheriff.

There was little public pressure for his ouster after his arrest and since he was running unopposed, Guerra was re-elected weeks later. County Judge Eloy Vera said the day of his arrest that Guerra, a mustachioed bear of man, was a "very good sheriff." He resigned only as a condition of his release pending trial.

In May, Guerra pleaded guilty to a drug trafficking charge for accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for passing information to a former Mexican law enforcement contact who he knew was working for Mexico's Gulf Cartel. Guerra once even gave false documents to one of his own deputies to close a drug trafficking investigation, prosecutors said.

Guerra could face up to life in prison when he is sentenced later this month.

Typhoon hits China, forcing 1 million to flee

2009-08-10T08:07:00.003+06:30

Morakot’s torrential rains cause Taiwan’s worst flooding in 50 years

A Taiwanese woman rides with rescuers in floodwater following a heavy rain brought by typhoon Morakot in a street in Linbian, southern of Taiwan, on Saturday.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | TAIPEI, Taiwan - A typhoon pummeled China's eastern coast Sunday, toppling houses, flooding villages and forcing nearly a million people to flee to safety. Officials rode bicycles to distribute food to residents trapped by rising waters.

Typhoon Morakot struck after triggering the worst flooding in Taiwan 50 years, leaving dozens missing and feared dead and toppling a six-story hotel. It earlier lashed the Philippines, killing at least 21 people.

Morakot, which means "emerald" in Thai, made landfall in China's eastern Fujian province, carrying heavy rain and winds of 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour, according the China Meteorological Administration. At least one child died after a house collapsed on him in Zhejiang province.

People stumbled with flashlights as the storm enveloped the town of Beibi in Fujian in darkness, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Strong winds uprooted trees or snapped them apart, while farmers tried to catch fish swept out of fish farms by high waves.

Village officials in Zhejiang rode bicycles to hand out drinking water and instant noodles to residents stranded by deep floods, while rescuers tried to reach eight sailors on a cargo ship blown onto a reef off Fujian, Xinhua reported.

Morakot was expected to weaken as it traveled north at about six miles (10 kilometers) per hour, but still bring strong winds and heavy rains to Shanghai, the meteorological administration said.

Houses collapse
Flood control officials in Shanghai released water stored in inland rivers to reduce levels in preparation, Xinhua said.

About 1 million people were evacuated from China's eastern coastal provinces — more than 490,000 in Zhejiang and 505,000 in neighboring Fujian. Authorities in Fujian called 48,000 boats back to harbor.

Five houses were destroyed by heavy rain ahead of the typhoon's landfall, burying four adults and a 4-year-old boy in debris, Xinhua said. The child died after emergency treatment failed, it said.

Another 300 houses collapsed and thousands of acres (hectares) of farmland were inundated, Xinhua said.

Dozens of domestic flights were canceled and delayed in Fujian and Zhejiang, and bus service in Fujian's capital, Fuzhou, was suspended, it said.

Taiwan, meanwhile, was recovering after the storm dumped more than 80 inches (200 centimeters) of rain on some southern counties Friday and Saturday, the worst flooding to hit the area in half a century, the Central Weather Bureau reported.

Taiwan's Disaster Relief Center said a woman was killed when her vehicle plunged into a ditch in Kaohsiung county in heavy rain Friday, and two men drowned in Pingtung and Tainan. It said 31 were missing and feared dead.

People missing
Morakot hit Taiwan late Friday and crossed the island Saturday. The Disaster Relief Center reported Sunday that flash floods washed away a home in southern Kaohsiung, leaving 16 people missing. Three were swept away in southeastern Taitung county, including two policemen helping to evacuate villagers.

Twelve others were missing, including three fishermen from a capsized boat and three others whose cars fell into a rain-swollen river, it said.

In southern Pingtung county, 4,000 people were stranded in inundated villages waiting for police boats to rescue them, news media reported.

In Taitung county, a six-story hotel collapsed and plunged into a river after floodwaters eroded its base, but all 300 people inside were evacuated and uninjured, officials said.

In the northern Philippines, the typhoon and lingering monsoon rains left 21 people dead and seven others missing in landslides and floodwaters, including three European tourists who were swept away Thursday, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said Sunday.

The bodies of the Belgian and two French citizens were found Friday, the council said.

Meanwhile, Xinhua said three fishermen died and 26 others were missing from Tropical Storm Goni, which hit Guangdong on Wednesday but weakened into a tropical depression by Sunday. Helicopters and ships were searching for the missing crew.

2 bombs explode on Spanish island of Mallorca

2009-08-10T08:00:00.002+06:30

No injuries reported in blasts blamed on Basque separatist group ETA

(photo: AP / Manu Mielniezuk)

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | MADRID - Two small bombs blamed on Basque separatist group ETA exploded Sunday in downtown locations on the Spanish resort island of Mallorca, causing no injuries, the government said. Police defused a third device found nearby.

The blasts occurred just over a week after ETA killed two police officers in Mallorca in attacks aimed at striking fear among tourists at the height of the summer holiday season.

One bomb exploded in La Rigoleta restaurant on the Can Pere Antoni beachfront in Palma de Mallorca and the second in an underground passage at the central Plaza Mayor square, the government said. Officers deactivated a bomb left at Bar Enco.

Police searched a hotel on the Mediterranean island's popular beach-front capital, Palma de Mallorca, for a possible fourth bomb, the government said.

Earlier Sunday, ETA claimed responsibility for four other bombings this summer that killed three people — including the two police officers killed in Mallorca on July 30 — and injured dozens more.

One bomb in a beach bag
Spain's state-run broadcaster TVE said on its late afternoon news bulletin that one bomb that exploded was in a beach bag hidden in the ceiling of a women's bathroom in the restaurant.

The restaurant had been evacuated following two phone calls made to a taxi company in mainland Spain's northern Basque region, El Pais newspaper said. The caller, who said he was calling on ETA's behalf, warned of the bombs.

Mallorca is one of Europe's main tourist destinations. In June, about 2.6 million passengers used Mallorca airport while more than 22 million passed through it last year.

In past years, ETA has often targeted Spain's tourist industry with small bombs during peak summer vacation months in an effort to disrupt trade and force the government to negotiate with them.

Spain has vowed to crush ETA since the group ended what it had said was a permanent cease-fire with a bombing that destroyed a Madrid airport parking garage and killed two people in 2006.

In a statement published Sunday in Basque newspaper Gara, one of ETA's usual mouthpieces, the group claimed responsibility for attacks that left three people dead and 60 injured in June and July. The attacks coincided with ETA's 50th anniversary.

In a July 29 attack, ETA said they detonated 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of explosives packed into a van parked near a Civil Guard barracks in the northern city of Burgos, injuring 60 people including children.

‘Frustrated and sterile’
The group said the attack proved police action against its members was "frustrated and sterile," noting in its published statement that "despite the vehicle being sought by police, it was parked for half a day outside the largest Civil Guard barracks adjacent to Basque lands."

It also claimed a July 10 bomb attack on Socialist party offices in Durango, in which no one was hurt, and said it planted the car bomb that killed anti-terrorism officer Eduardo Antonio Puelles on June 19.

ETA also claimed the July 30 bomb attached to the underside of a patrol vehicle that killed the two police officers in Palma de Mallorca.

On Saturday, the Basque regional government and Spain's National Court banned all pro-separatist marches scheduled in the northern seaside resort of San Sebastian, which is celebrating an annual festival.

Police clashed with demonstrators late Saturday, and two alleged separatists were detained.

ETA has killed more than 825 people since 1968 when it started a violent campaign for an independent Basque state.

Baby among three new A(H1N1) deaths

2009-08-10T07:53:00.003+06:30

The Star | KUALA LUMPUR: Three more people including a baby and a child died of Influenza A (H1N1), bringing the death toll to 18.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said the 16-month-old baby girl had fever, cough and runny nose for a week before she was admitted to hospital last Sunday.

He said the baby died of severe pneumonia with underlying A (H1N1) infection at Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Baru on Friday.

A five-year-old boy with upper respiratory tract infection, died of encephalitis secondary to A (H1N1) at Tengku Ampuan Afzan Hospital in Kuantan on Friday, said Liow.

He said the other flu-hit victim was a 63-year-old asthmatic patient who died of severe pneumonia and underlying pulmonary tuberculosis.

“He had fever, runny nose and cough for five days before being admitted to Selayang Hospital last Sunday.’’
Liow said the country also recorded 53 new cases, bringing the total to 1,578.

“There are still 64 people warded at the hospital including two babies, two obese persons and a post-delivery mother in the high-risk group.’’

Liow has urged the public to practise good hygiene, avoid crowded places and shun big events.

However, he said the Merdeka celebrations at Bukit Jalil National Stadium this month would be held as planned for now.

“We will screen everyone including participants of the parade and the public before they enter the stadium,’’ he said.

He also called for private medical practitioners to give out masks to flu and cough patients as part of their treatment.

“The vaccine will only arrive by the end of the year. For now, we must prevent the flu from spreading,’’ he told a press conference after opening the Japan Clinic at HSC Medical Centre here Saturday.
Liow also urged local doctors to be more competitive following healthcare liberalisation.

The liberalisation, which is taking place in stages, enables foreign companies to open hospitals and foreign doctors to work in the country.

Liow said the ministry has so far opened up five sectors.

Plane, copter collide over Hudson River, killing 9

2009-08-09T09:44:00.002+06:30

Rescue workers transport a body in the Hudson River in New York, Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009, after small plane collided with a tour helicopter carrying about a half-dozen people, sending debris into the river and onto the New Jersey waterfront. (AP Photo/Robert Mecea)

By VERENA DOBNIK / Associated Press Writer | NEW YORK (AP) -- A small plane collided with a sightseeing helicopter over the Hudson River on Saturday, scattering debris in the water and forcing people on the New Jersey waterfront to scamper for cover. Authorities believe all nine people aboard the two aircraft were killed.

A helicopter pilot on the ground at the heliport for Liberty Tours, which operated the doomed sightseeing craft, saw the plane approaching the helicopter and tried to radio an alert to the pilots, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. The warning wasn't heard or didn't happen in time.

"He saw a single-engine aircraft," National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman said Saturday. "He radioed ... 'You have a fixed-wing behind you.' There was no response."

The collision, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg said was "not survivable," happened just after noon and was seen by thousands of people enjoying a crystal-clear summer day from the New York and New Jersey sides of the river.

"First I saw a piece of something flying through the air. Then I saw the helicopter going down into the water," said Kelly Owen, a Florida tourist at a Manhattan park. "I thought it was my imagination."

The two aircraft went down just south of the stretch of river where a US Airways jet landed safely seven months ago. But this time, there was no miracle.

"This is not going to have a happy ending," Bloomberg said. Hours after the collision, he said he thought it fair to say "this has changed from a rescue to a recovery mission."

The NTSB was investigating the cause of the collision.

Three bodies had been recovered before diving operations were suspended for the night, Hersman said.

Two bodies were recovered in the water, one floating free and one in the wreckage, and other bodies were spotted in the debris in the river, the mayor said. The crash victims included five Italian tourists and a pilot on the helicopter and the three people on the plane, including a child, Bloomberg said.

Witnesses described seeing a low-flying plane smashing into the helicopter, and then wreckage scattering. One of the plane's wings was severed by the impact.

Buzz Nahas was walking along the Hoboken, N.J., waterfront when he heard the impact, then looked up to see the plane without one of its wings "fluttering" into the water.

"There was a loud pop, almost like a car backfire," he said. "The helicopter dropped like a rock."

The plane, headed for Ocean City, N.J., left Teterboro Airport in New Jersey at 11:54 a.m., the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a statement. It had landed at the airport 25 minutes earlier with the pilot aboard to pick up two passengers.

The plane had started its journey in Pennsylvania, an official familiar with the plane's flight path told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

The plane, a Piper PA-32, was registered to LCA Partnership in Fort Washington, Pa. The address is shared by a company run by Steven Altman, of Ambler, Pa. A woman who answered the telephone Saturday at Altman's home hung up, and police wouldn't let reporters enter a private driveway leading to the home.

The helicopter was a Eurocopter AS 350 owned by Liberty Tours, a sightseeing and charter company. It was struck by the plane shortly after lifting off from a heliport on Manhattan's West side.

On the Hoboken, N.J., waterfront, people scattered as pieces of debris fell from the sky. A wheel from one of the aircraft lay on Hoboken's Sinatra Drive.

"We saw the helicopter propellers fly all over," Hoboken resident Katie Tanski said.

Afterward, much of the wreckage sank quickly into the river.

The accident happened in a busy general aviation corridor over the river that is often filled with sightseeing craft on nice days.

Pilots have some freedom to pick their own route, as long as they stay under 1,000 feet and don't stray too close to Manhattan's skyscrapers. The skies over the river are often filled with pleasure craft, buzzing by for a view of the Statue of Liberty.

Steve Riethof, a volunteer at the Aviation Hall of Fame in Teterboro, said Saturday that pilots headed for the Jersey Shore from Teterboro generally fly through Manhattan.

Accidents happen every few years. New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor died when their plane hit a skyscraper while flying a popular sightseeing route in 2006.

In January, the river was the scene of a spectacular aircraft landing that resulted in no loss of life after a US Airways flight taking off from LaGuardia Airport, in Queens, slammed into a flock of birds and lost power in both engines. The plane crash-landed in the river, and all 155 people on board were pulled to safety.

The NTSB has long expressed concern that federal safety oversight of helicopter tours isn't rigorous enough. The Federal Aviation Administration hasn't implemented more than a dozen NTSB recommendations aimed at improving the safety of the tours, called on-demand flight operations.

A report by the U.S. Department of Transportation's inspector general last month found that 109 people died in accidents involving on-demand flights in 2007 and 2008, while no one died in commercial airline accidents.

The identities of the victims of Saturday's crash were not immediately released. Italian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maurizio Massari confirmed there were Italians aboard the helicopter and said the ministry was working to find out further details through diplomats and authorities in New York.

Paola Casali, from Rome, was scheduled to take a helicopter tour with Liberty after noon on Saturday, but her 13-year-old son, Lorenzo, was too scared to go.

"I feel very, really lucky," Casali said. "I think God was in our life. Today is the beginning of a new life, to catch every moment, every minute of this life."

A person who answered the phone at a Liberty Tours office said the company would be releasing a statement. The company runs sightseeing excursions around the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Manhattan at costs ranging from $130 to about $1,000.

Two years ago, a Liberty helicopter fell 500 feet from the sky during a sightseeing trip. The pilot was credited with safely landing the chopper in the Hudson and helping evacuate her seven passengers.

In 1997, a rotor on one of its sightseeing helicopters clipped a Manhattan building, forcing an emergency landing. No one was hurt.

---

Associated Press writers David B. Caruso, Samantha Gross, Suzanne Ma and Amy Westfeldt in New York City, Beth DeFalco and Geoff Mulvihill in Hoboken, N.J., Samantha Henry in Teterboro, N.J., Kathy Matheson in Ambler, Pa., and Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C., and AP News researcher Julie Reed contributed to this report.

Top terror leader reportedly killed in Indonesia

2009-08-09T09:21:00.005+06:30

Suspect had been linked with attacks on 2 Jakarta hotels, other bombings

Slamet Riyadi / AP

Members of the Indonesian police anti-terror unit raid engaged in a 16-hour siege with militants on Saturday.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | BEJI, Indonesia - Southeast Asia's most wanted terror suspect was reportedly killed during a 16-hour siege on a suspected militant hide-out that ended Saturday when police stormed the house, but officials said they could not yet confirm he was among the dead.

Local TV stations reported militant chief Noordin Mohammad Top, who is blamed for last month's attacks on two American hotels in the capital, Jakarta, as well as bombings on the resort island of Bali, was killed in the bathroom of the house in a rice-growing village in central Java province following a lengthy bomb and gun battle.

The body of a man believed to be Noordin was flown to Jakarta for an autopsy, but police "cannot yet confirm that this is Noordin Top," national police chief Bambang Hendarso Damuri said.

Police don't want to say that Noordin is assumed dead and any announcement will have to wait until next week after a DNA examination is complete, Hendarso said at nationally televised news conference.

The suicide attacks on the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta killed seven people, all but one of them foreigners, and ended a four-year pause in terror strikes in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Noordin is also believed to have played a major role in four other bombings in Indonesia since 2002, including nightclub attacks on the resort island of Bali that year that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

He later emerged as a regional terrorist leader and skilled bomb maker who has been accused of masterminding a series of suicide attacks — including the triple Bali bombings in 2005 — that killed dozens of people.

Motivational role
Noordin is a Malaysian citizen who claimed in a video in 2005 to be al-Qaida's representative in Southeast Asia and to be carrying out attacks on Western civilians to avenge Muslim deaths in Afghanistan.

Killing or capturing him would be a major victory in Indonesia's fight against militants and could significantly weaken the chances of more attacks, given the key planning, financial and motivational role he is believed to have played in terror networks.

Police spokesman Nanan Sukarna said officers believed Noordin, who is Southeast Asia's most wanted militant suspect, and two or three of his followers were inside the raided home, but could not immediately confirm their fate.

Minutes after the raid, witnesses said officers outside the house took off their helmets and were shaking hands with each other, suggesting all those inside had either been killed or captured. The firing ceased.

A police officer at the scene said a body was found in the bathroom of the house and authorities brought a coffin there. After about one hour, three ambulances left the home.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters he had been briefed about an ongoing operation "to uphold law and to eradicate terrorism," but made no mention of Noordin. Still, he praised police.

"I extend my highest gratitude and respect to the police for their brilliant achievement in this operation," he said.

Malaysian terror suspect Noordin Mohammad Top is believed to have been involved in the bombings of two Jakarta hotels in July.

Earlier Saturday, officers raided a second house close to Jakarta where they shot and killed two suspected militants and seized bombs and a car rigged to carry them, said Police chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri.

Danuri said one of those arrested had reserved a room in one of the hotels that was used by the terrorists before they attacked.

The house was about three miles from the residence of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The Detik.com Web site, quoting an unnamed police source, said officers believed they were planning to attack Yudhoyono's house.

Officers circled the house in central Java province late Friday afternoon after making arrests in a nearby town. At one point, they sent remote-controlled robots into the isolated building to search for bombs.

Booby traps
Not long before they stormed the red-tiled building, officers dressed in black behind a shield fired into the house from close range, while others fired repeated volleys from a hill behind it.

Indonesian police have been met with booby traps and suicide bombers in at least one other raid on a terrorist hide-out and approached the house with extreme caution.

Indonesian police have arrested more than 200 militants associated with the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network since 2002, including many with ties to Noordin, who they say has narrowly escaped capture several times.

Police have offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture. Experts say Noordin was likely being hidden by a small network of sympathizers who might not agree with his tactics, but nevertheless believe they have a duty to shelter him.

Java, home to more than half of Indonesia's 235 million people, has long been the focus in the hunt for Noordin and his associates.

In November 2005, Azahari bin Husin, a top Jemaah Islamiyah bomb maker, was fatally shot by counterterrorism forces in east Java. Sariyah Jabir, another explosives expert, was killed in April 2006 during a raid on a militant hide-out in central Java.

Prosecutors say Noordin also orchestrated an earlier attack on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in 2003 and a blast outside the Australian Embassy in 2004, both in the Indonesian capital. Al-Qaida is believed to have helped fund several of the attacks.

Together the bombings allegedly linked to Noordin killed more than 240 people, many of them Western tourists.

U.S. and Britain again target Afghan poppies

2009-08-09T09:11:00.005+06:30

Officials hope to provide alternatives before planting season begins in Oct.

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters file

An man harvests opium in a poppy field in Afghanistan's Farah province on May 5.

By Karen DeYoung / Washington Post | The U.S. and British governments plan to spend millions of dollars over the next two months to try to persuade Afghan farmers not to plant opium poppy, by far the country's most profitable cash crop and a major source of Taliban funding and official corruption.

By selling wheat seeds and fruit saplings to farmers at token prices, offering cheap credit, and paying poppy-farm laborers to work on roads and irrigation ditches, U.S. and British officials hope to provide alternatives before the planting season begins in early October. Many poppy farmers survive Afghanistan's harsh winters on loans advanced by drug traffickers and their associates, repaid with the spring harvest.

"We need a way to get money in [farmers'] hands right away," said a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan.

The program replaces the Bush administration's focus on crop eradication, which "wasted hundreds of millions of dollars," according to Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Destroying the crops succeeded only in "alienat[ing] poor farmers" and "driving people into the hands of the Taliban," he told reporters last week.

Poor track record
But many previous U.S.-funded crop-substitution programs have failed as well, from Asia to Latin America. A similar plan in Colombia, begun in the late 1990s, has barely made a dent in the level of cocaine production, although the country began to stabilize in recent years as its U.S.-trained military adopted new strategies against armed insurgents and civil institutions were strengthened.

Officials maintain that the new Afghan plan differs from unsuccessful "alternative" plans because it is an integral part of a military-development strategy that includes tens of thousands of U.S. troops to keep the Taliban and traffickers at bay while Afghan security forces are being trained. Plans call for hundreds of U.S. and international aid experts to work directly with farmers and local officials until the Afghan government has matured.

"The way [the assistance] is offered is important," said the senior U.S. military official, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program on the record. "We are not providing subsidies . . . we are not just handing out cash." Farmers will have a "stake" in the program, he said, buying vouchers for seeds and fertilizers for about 10 percent of their value. Cash will be distributed only as credit or for work performed, the official added.

The United States and its allies in Afghanistan have long debated whether they should simply pay farmers for not planting poppy, a short-term fix that experts have deemed counterproductive. Farmers probably would take the money and "grow it anyways," said another U.S. official in Afghanistan. "We would likely drive the price up," he added, "as there would now be competition between the narcotics trade and the government. More farmers would therefore plant more poppy next year."

The epicenter of the overlapping wars against opium production and the Taliban is southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, where more than two-thirds of the country's poppy is grown. Thousands of Marines and British troops are in the midst of a major offensive there against entrenched insurgent forces and are providing security in villages as they are cleared.

"By this time next year," the senior military official said, "what we want to see is decreased poppy harvest. For us, that will be a metric of success. If we don't get conditions set now, in the next 60 days, we're not going to get the results we'd like."

The timeline is daunting. A planned "civilian surge" of hundreds of U.S. aid officials and agriculture experts has been slow to arrive. A micro-finance loan program is in the planning stages, and although $300 million in aid has been set aside for "rapid response" initiatives, including voucher programs for seeds and fertilizer, distribution has been sluggish. Mohammad Gulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand, whom U.S. officials have praised for encouraging local communities to turn away from poppy, held the first of eight scheduled outreach meetings only last week.

The plan also includes stepped-up efforts to interdict drug shipments and destroy stockpiles. The Drug Enforcement Administration expects to increase its manpower on the ground from 13 agents in 2008 to 81 by the end of this year. The Marine assault in Helmand, a DEA official in Kabul said, has "greatly enhanced" the agency's ability to take action there, he said.

The DEA is also training Afghan police in counternarcotics investigations, and the Justice Department is developing a program for Afghan prosecutors, although those efforts are said to be moving slowly. Officials disagree over how much of the profit from Afghanistan's opium exports goes directly into Taliban coffers. According to Holbrooke, most Taliban funding comes from wealthy individuals in the Persian Gulf region. But there is widespread agreement among U.S. officials that drug traffickers, warlords, corrupt government officials and insurgents work cooperatively to continue cultivation, processing and exports.

Some of the greatest challenges to the new strategy are at the level of farmhouse economics. More than 365,000 Afghan farm households earned about $730 million from poppy last year — a fraction of the $3.4 billion earned from opium exports, according to the United Nations, but an amount nearly equal to the national government's $750 million in official revenue.

"The average annual cash income of opium-poppy growing households in 2007 was 53 percent higher than those of non-opium poppy growing households," the U.N. 2008 Afghanistan Opium Survey reported, and "farmers in Helmand reported the highest cash income," 70 percent of which came from poppy.

The average Helmand farmer cultivates less than an acre of land, with about half an acre planted in poppy yielding a gross income of about $2,000. After paying 45 percent of that in production costs, and 10 percent in local taxes, he nets about $900, more than twice what he would earn from wheat at current, albeit rising, prices.

Spring opium is harvested in May, after the plant flowers and seed capsules develop. The capsules are lanced and a latex-like opium gum oozes out and is gathered by hand. In Helmand, where production per acre is highest, capsules are lanced an average of four times in a labor-intensive process.

Extra workers travel from all over Afghanistan for the harvest, and the pay is higher than it is for virtually all other forms of unskilled labor. The average daily wage for construction work, the United Nations reported, is $3.60. Wheat harvesting earns $4.40, and opium "lancing/gum collection" pays $9.50. Wages in Helmand for lancing, $15 a day, are the highest in the country.

"What we're looking for is a way to compete with that," the senior military official said of the opium economy. "This is not easy. . . . There is no silver bullet."

Correspondent Pamela Constable in Kabul and staff writer Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.

French woman, embassy staff confess in Iran trial

2009-08-09T08:54:00.004+06:30

Mass trial of activists, election protesters called an ‘outrage’

(photo: AP)

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer | TEHRAN, Iran - A young French academic and local staff of the British and French embassies stood trial Saturday with dozens of Iranian opposition figures and confessed to being involved in the country's postelection unrest.

Iran's opposition and rights groups have condemned the trial as a sham and say such confessions are coerced and scripted. Britain, which seemed caught off guard by the appearance of its embassy employee, called it an outrage, while France demanded the immediate release of its citizen.

Saturday's second hearing at Tehran's Revolutionary Court involved a new group of detainees and focused on testimony from the French academic and the two other foreign-linked defendants, demonstrating the government's resolve to taint Iran's pro-reform movement as a tool of foreign countries - particularly Britain and the United States.

The prosecutor accused the two countries of fomenting the unrest in an attempt to engineer a "soft overthrow" of the government.

The French academic and the two embassy employees took turns standing at a podium in the large, wood-paneled courtroom to make confessions before a judge seated between two large portraits for Iran's supreme leader and the Islamic Republic's founder.

The French Embassy employee, Nazak Afshar, cried as she admitted she was involved in postelection disturbances. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue and said that "brothers at the Intelligence Ministry made me understand my mistake," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Such confessions - whether coerced or not - have become the centerpiece of Iran's mass trial of more than 100 prominent opposition figures and activists, which began a week ago.

The defendants are accused of crimes including rioting, spying and plotting to overthrow the regime during the massive street demonstrations denouncing the official results of the June 12 election.

The prosecutor read out an indictment at Saturday's session that accuses Britain and the U.S. of planning to rouse the unrest with the aim of toppling Iran's Islamic rulers through a "soft overthrow," the IRNA news agency reported. The indictment also accused the two powers of providing financial assistance to Iran's reformists to undermine hard-line ruling clerics.

Hossein Rassam, a political analyst at the British Embassy who was arrested shortly after the election, told the court that Britain was involved in fomenting the unrest, according IRNA.

He said a budget of 300,000 pounds - or about $500,000 - had been allocated to establish contacts with Iranian political groups, influential individuals and activists, IRNA reported.

The news agency quoted him as saying that he established contacts before the election with the campaign headquarters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the pro-reform candidate who says he was robbed of victory through fraud.

"My main responsibility was to gather information from Tehran and other cities by setting up contacts with individuals and influential parties and political groups and to send reports to London. ... The British Embassy, due to its hostile policies in Iran and fear of exposure of its contacts inside Iran, employed local staff to establish such contacts. I established such contacts based on orders from embassy officials," IRNA quoted Rassam as saying.

Rassam has been charged with espionage and "acting against national security," IRNA reported.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemned the trial and said the British government had raised the matter with the Iranian ambassador in London and Iran's deputy foreign minister.

"Hossein is a member of our staff going about his legitimate duties," Miliband said in a statement. It added that the trial against him and other embassy staff "only brings further discredit to the Iranian regime."

An earlier Foreign Office statement said Rassam's appearance in court was an outrage and contradicted assurances from senior Iranian officials.

Eight other British Embassy staffers arrested along with Rassam were released after about a week in custody.

Seated in the front row of the courtroom with a scarf over her hair was 24-year-old French academic Clotilde Reiss, who was reportedly arrested July 1 at Tehran airport.

According to IRNA, she told the court that she made a mistake by attending a demonstration.

"I had personal motives for joining gatherings to see what was happening out of curiosity but I admit that I made a mistake and should not have attended," IRNA quoted her as saying.

Reiss has been charged with acting against national security by joining protests, gathering information, taking photos and sending them abroad.

The French Foreign Ministry on Saturday called for the immediate release of both Reiss and embassy employee Afshar, saying that the charges against them were without basis.

The ministry statement also objected to the conditions under which Reiss and Afshar were being tried, and "deplored" that neither woman was represented by a lawyer.

Sweden, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, expressed concern over the trials and noted that actions against one EU country - citizen or embassy staff - is considered action against all EU member states.

Iranian defendants appearing Saturday included Ali Tajernia, a former reformist lawmaker; Shahaboddin Tabatabaei, a prominent leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran's largest reformist political party; and Ahmad Zeidabadi, an outspoken journalist opposing hard-liners.

A reformist Web site said riot police attacked family members of the defendants and others gathered in front of the court to denounce the trial.

---

Associated Press Writers Raphael G. Satter contributed to this report from London, Elaine Ganley from Paris.

Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi verdict set for Friday

2009-07-29T10:09:00.003+06:30

(photo: AP / MRTV, via APTN)

The Associated Press | YANGON, Myanmar -- The defense team for Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi delivered its final arguments Tuesday, closing the case days ahead of a verdict the Nobel laureate softly said will be "painfully obvious."

The high-profile trial that began in May has drawn international condemnation from rights activists, world leaders and celebrities who have called for her immediate release. But neither outside pressure nor the possibility of closer ties with the West have deterred the ruling junta, who appeared determined to find her guilty and keep her behind bars through elections planned for next year.

Judge Thaung Nyunt said the court will make its ruling on Friday, according to defense attorney Nyan Win. The lawyer said he preferred not to speculate on the outcome, but said "I have never seen any defendant in a political case being set free," without directly calling the case politically motivated.

The quick verdict surprised Suu Kyi's lawyers because a ruling wasn't expected until next month. Details on why the court set the earlier date were not immediately available.

The detained 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate faces a possible five years in prison on charges that she violated the terms of her house arrest by harboring an uninvited American man - John William Yettaw - who swam to her lakeside home and stayed for two days.

Diplomats from the U.S., Japan, Singapore and Thailand were allowed to attend the last day of the trial Tuesday, one of the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity citing embassy protocol.

Suu Kyi - who has been in detention for 14 of the past 20 years - thanked the diplomats during the hearing "for trying to promote a just outcome" but told them she was not optimistic.

"I'm afraid the verdict will be painfully obvious," Suu Kyi said, according to several diplomats who heard her comments in court.

London-based Amnesty International, in a last-minute bid to deter the junta from imposing any harsh new punishments on Suu Kyi, gave her its highest honor Monday for her defense of human rights.

U2's Bono publicly announced the award - Amnesty's Ambassador of Conscience Award - before 80,000 cheering fans at a concert Monday in Dublin. It underscored the widespread international support for her struggle to bring democracy to the military-ruled country.

Suu Kyi's defense team delivered its final arguments in the trial Tuesday, a day after the prosecution closed its case.

But the defense lost its bid to put a foreign ministry official on the stand, Nyan Win said, adding that the court claimed his testimony was "not important." The court had rejected all but two of the defense's witnesses.

Her lawyers - who have not contested the facts of the case - have argued all along that the law used by authorities against Suu Kyi is invalid because it applies to a constitution abolished two decades ago. They also say that government guards stationed outside Suu Kyi's compound should be held responsible for any intrusion in her property.

Suu Kyi emerged as the country's democracy icon during a popular uprising in 1988, which was brutally suppressed by the military that has ruled the country since 1962. Her party won national elections in 1990, but Myanmar's generals refused to relinquish power.

Yettaw, meanwhile, is charged as an abettor in violating the terms of Suu Kyi's house arrest and could also be sent to prison for five years. He has pleaded not guilty, and explained in court he went to warn Suu Kyi after having a dream she would be assassinated.

The New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a junta mouthpiece, claimed Tuesday that Yettaw "illegally intruded" into Suu Kyi's home and appeared to be plotting an escape for her.

"He even left two chadors and dark sunglasses to (serve as a) disguise," the editorial said, referring to cloaks worn by women in the Middle East. "Was it aimed at taking her out of the house? There are many points to ponder."
Associated Press writer Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this report.

source by : The News & Observer

Prison looms for Aung San Suu Kyi as Burma show trial draws to a close

2009-07-29T09:57:00.004+06:30

Ms Suu Kyi and two of her companions have been on trial since May

Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor / The Times | The Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is facing an almost certain criminal conviction and a sentence of up to five years in prison when a Rangoon court delivers its verdict at the end of this week, her defence team said yesterday.

Wrapping up her two-and-a-half-month trial, Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyers gave their reply to the prosecution’s final arguments in a court in Insein prison, Rangoon. She is accused of violating the terms of her lengthy house arrest by giving shelter to an eccentric American who entered the lakeside home where she has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention.

Speaking softly, Ms Suu Kyi stood and turned to diplomats attending the hearing and said: “I’m afraid the verdict will be painfully obvious.”

“She thanked us for trying to promote a just outcome,” said an Asian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. Only diplomats from the US, Japan, Singapore and Thailand were allowed to attend the last day of the trial.

Her lawyers held out little hope of an acquittal when the verdict is delivered. “We have a good chance according to the law but we cannot know what the court will decide because this is a political case,” said Nyan Win, a lawyer for Ms Suu Kyi and the spokesman for her party, the National League for Democracy. “I have never seen any defendant in a political case being set free. We have done our best and she is prepared for the worst.”

Ms Suu Kyi and two of her companions have been on trial since May for giving shelter to John Yettaw, who swam uninvited to her heavily guarded home in central Rangoon. She says that she did nothing wrong in giving food and shelter to Mr Yettaw, and that she refrained from handing him over to the authorities to avoid bringing trouble on him and on the police who were supposed to have been guarding her house.

Many critics of Burma’s military dictatorship accuse it of using the bizarre incident as a pretext for continuing to deprive her of her freedom until after the elections that it is promising to hold next year. Her lawyers argue that, even according to its own regulations, Ms Suu Kyi’s house arrest was due to expire this year.

The defence lost its attempt to put a Foreign Ministry official on trial after the court said that his testimony was “not important”. All but two witnesses summoned by the defence had been rejected. But the generals may have misjudged the strength of international sympathy provoked by the case. Even Burma’s neighbours in the Association of South-East Asian Nations, who generally avoid any criticism of one another’s internal affairs, expressed dismay at the trial. Yesterday the junta postponed a visit to Burma by Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Thai Prime Minister, who was especially critical of the regime, apparently because the trip coincided with Friday’s verdict on Ms Suu Kyi.

Burma’s senior general, Than Shwe, has shown no sign of relenting to the pressure. When Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, visited the regime’s isolated new capital, Naypyidaw, early this month, he suffered the humiliation of being refused the opportunity to meet Ms Suu Kyi.

A young boy demands freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi outside the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok

The state media, which are firmly under the control of the Government, have rejected criticisms of the trial. “Suu Kyi is not a political prisoner but the person who is on trial for breaching an existing law,” the New Light of Myanmar said in an editorial last week. “Demanding release of Daw Suu Kyi means showing reckless disregard for the law. The court will hand down a reasonable term to her if she is found guilty, and it will release her if she is found not guilty.”

Given this intransigence, and the regime’s record of locking up political prisoners, more than 2,000 of whom are in detention, it seems unlikely that she will be acquitted. Diplomats in Rangoon speculate that she may eventually be pardoned by General Than Shwe in an attempt to appear magnanimous. Even if she is released from jail, it will be to the continuing confinement of house arrest.

A diplomat present in the court last week said that Ms Suu Kyi appeared healthy during the three-hour hearing. “She was joking with her defence team and smiling,” the diplomat said. “She was 100 per cent engaged with what was going on, ramrod-straight, and resplendent in a yellow skirt.”

Mr Yettaw has been charged with immigration violations and with swimming in an unauthorised place, as well as with abetting Ms Suu Kyi in violating the terms of her house arrest. Like her, he could be sentenced to five years in jail if convicted, along with Ms Suu Kyi’s two female companions.

Suu Kyi awarded Amnesty's highest honor

2009-07-28T08:30:00.003+06:30

(photo: AP / David Longstreath)

The Associated Press | YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has won Amnesty International's highest award for her defense of human rights, underscoring international support for the Nobel laureate whose trial is ending Tuesday.

She is widely expected to be convicted of violating the terms of her house arrest and faces a possible five years in prison, although there has been speculation she may stay under house arrest rather than serve time in jail.

Neither international outrage nor offers of closer ties with the U.S. if Suu Kyi is freed appear to have deflected the ruling junta's determination to neutralize - if not imprison - the 64-year-old. The international community and Suu Kyi's local supporters worry the ruling junta has found an excuse to keep her behind bars through elections planned for next year.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International gave Suu Kyi its Ambassador of Conscience Award on Monday, hoping its highest honor would help deter the junta from imposing any harsh new punishments on her. The Irish band U2 was to publicly announce the award at a Dublin concert Monday night.

"In those long and often dark years, Aung San Suu Kyi has remained a symbol of hope, courage and the undying defense of human rights," Amnesty's Secretary General Irene Khan said of her long detention.

Suu Kyi - who has spent nearly 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest - is charged with violating the terms of her detention by harboring an American man, also being tried, who swam uninvited to her lakeside home and stayed for two days.

Her defense team is preparing to give its final arguments in the case on Tuesday, a day after the prosecution delivered its closing remarks.

Suu Kyi's lawyer, Nyan Win, said he anticipated the verdict in two to three weeks.

The defense team submitted an application to the court Monday to allow them to call a Myanmar foreign ministry official as an additional witness, but the court is unlikely to accept the request. The court has allowed only two defense witnesses to testify, while the prosecution has been allowed 14.

Nyan Win said the defense has records that former U.N. representative Nyunt Maung Shein defended the regime's continued detention of Suu Kyi, stating that "(Suu Kyi) was not arrested but was detained for her own security."

The new witness could help prove that "if she was not under arrest and was detained for her own safety, the alleged violations are no longer relevant," Nyan Win said.

Nyunt Maung Shein made the statement at three meetings of the working group of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the lawyer said.

Final arguments in the case - which began May 18 - were also given Monday by the lawyer for American John W. Yettaw, 53, of Falcon, Missouri, Nyan Win said. Two female companions of Suu Kyi, who are being tried on the same charges, also presented closing statements before the court.

Diplomats from the U.S., Singapore, Australia, Japan, the Philippines and Malaysia were allowed to attend the morning session but not the key afternoon one, a diplomat told reporters, on condition of anonymity in line with embassy protocol. Authorities only allowed U.S. Consul Colin Furst in the afternoon because an American was standing trial.

Yettaw is charged with violating terms of Suu Kyi's house arrest - as an abettor - and could be sent to prison for five years. He also faces a municipal charge of swimming in a non-swimming area and is accused of immigration violations. His lawyer also gave closing arguments Monday.

Yettaw has pleaded not guilty and explained in court that he had gone to warn Suu Kyi after having a dream that she would be assassinated.

At an Asia-Pacific security forum last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered Myanmar the prospect of better relations with the United States, but said that depended in part on the fate of Suu Kyi.

Myanmar state media accused Clinton and others calling for Suu Kyi's release of "interference." Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been under military rule since 1962.

---

Associated Press writer Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this report.

Nigeria clashes kill over 50 in northeastern city

2009-07-28T08:23:00.004+06:30

photo: AP /George Osodi

By Ardo Hazzad / The Star | BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - More than 50 Nigerians were killed on Sunday in clashes between security forces and militants in the northeastern city of Bauchi, residents and hospital sources said.

The fighting began early on Sunday when around 70 militants armed with guns and explosives attacked a local police station in retaliation for the arrest of their leaders.

Police and soldiers repelled the attack and then raided neighbourhoods to arrest those responsible. Hospital sources and residents said more than 50 people were killed in the fighting.

A Reuters reporter counted 32 bodies at two Bauchi police stations and said dozens were wounded among the more than 200 arrested. The official government death toll is 39, including one soldier.

"We have pre-empted the militants. Otherwise the situation would have been bad," Bauchi state Governor Isa Yuguda told reporters.

"I'm calling on all the people of Bauchi to be calm and be rest assured the situation has been brought under control," he added.

The governor imposed a night time curfew in Bauchi for the next few days to calm tensions. There was an increased police presence in some neighbourhoods, but businesses remained open and people were milling the streets freely before the curfew.

ISLAMIC GROUP

Police spokesman Mohammed Barau said the militants belonged to Boko Haram, a local group that wants sharia (Islamic law) to be imposed on all of Nigeria.

A member of Boko Haram who was wounded during the initial attack on the police station told Reuters his group wanted to "clean the (Nigerian) system which is polluted by western education and uphold sharia all over the country."

"The police has been arresting our leaders that is why we decided to retaliate," said the man, who gave his name only as Abdullah.

The Islamic group is not connected to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Nigeria's most prominent rebel group responsible for a campaign of violence that has devastated Africa's biggest energy sector since early 2006.

Bauchi is one of 12 states in the predominately Muslim north that started a stricter enforcement of sharia in 2000 -- a decision that has alienated sizable Christian minorities and sparked bouts of sectarian violence that killed thousands.

Nigeria is roughly equally split between Christians and Muslims, although traditional animist beliefs underpin many people's faith.

More than 200 ethnic groups generally live peacefully side by side in the West African country, although civil war left one million people dead between 1967 and 1970 and there have been bouts of religious unrest since then.

Last November, hundreds were killed in two days of clashes in the central city of Jos after a disputed election triggered the worst fighting between Muslim and Christian gangs in years in Africa's most populous country.

Copyright © 2008 Reuters

China, US should find common ground in strategic dialogue

2009-07-28T08:09:00.003+06:30

(photo: AP / Guang Niu, Pool)

By Yuan Peng (China Daily) | The first meeting of the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue is due to be held in Washington today and tomorrow.

As the first episode of the new mechanism that has replaced the previous strategic economic dialogue (SED), the meeting will provide the two powers with an occasion for all-round and indepth talks on bilateral ties under US President Barack Obama's administration. What it will produce is expected to directly determine the future of Sino-US relations.

The dialogue should serve as an important platform for Beijing and Washington to evade risks, control crises and solve issues of common interest to push forward a smooth relationship. Since Obama took office, Sino-US relations have made steady and tangible progress although there still exist hidden troubles and risks, which, if not properly handled, could bring it to standstill or even plunge into retrogress.

Take the South China Sea issue for example. Because of the lack of mutual trust, China and the US have always held varying stances on how to realize co-existence in that zone. The two countries have failed to work out effective ways to prevent a possible military conflict there, given their different interpretations of the International Maritime Law clauses and intervention of a third party. The South China Sea issue is by far the biggest tinderbox in any likely Sino-US military conflict and thus it needs to be addressed as a priority.

The deep disputes and conflicts between China and the US on the issues that closely relate to the former's core interests, such as Taiwan, Tibet and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions, are likely to taint the improved Sino-US ties. Also, it still remains unknown whether the US will push forward a long-controversial arms sale to Taiwan in the remaining months of this year, or whether Obama will meet the Dalai Lama. What remarks Washington will make on China's Xinjiang will also test bilateral ties. If Washington is not careful, it could stoke the long-latent nationalist sentiment among Chinese people and thus affect their attitude toward the Obama administration. These are undoubtedly unfavorable to the development of Sino-US relations.

Also, on a wide range of other issues, from climate change to anti-terror activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and global economic recovery, China and the US share both agreements and disagreements. Neither country has made any substantive progress on the issue of climate change, leaving uncertainties to the prospect whether Beijing and Washington, the world's two largest greenhouse gas emitters, can reach consensuses at the Copenhagen climate conference in December. China and the US have also failed to enact concrete and viable formulas to cooperate on anti-terrorism policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although they enjoy a common aspiration. In fighting the global financial crisis and striving to improve their economies, the two also sit in the same boat. However, they are far apart on how to reconstruct the collapsed international financial order and ensure China's financial security.

All these factors will impinge on the upcoming meeting between China and the US in Washington, ensuring it is placed in the context of a long-term development of bilateral ties.

The dialogue should open a new start for a new-type of Sino-US relationship featured as a two-plus-two meeting. It will surely provoke intensive international speculation about the long-mooted Group of Two and a China-US co-governance of global affairs.

As a concrete move to implement the concept reached between President Hu Jintao and his US counterpart Obama at a London meeting in April to replace the SED, the new and broader-range dialogue will help Beijing and Washington forge a new-two-plus-two (two officials from each side) mechanism. It would be much different from the two-plus-two model between the US and Japan, which is stamped with remnants of the Cold War and military alliance and is obviously targeted at a third party. Also, it would not be the same as the strategic dialogue established between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War period. As a dialogue between two rivals, the US-Soviet dialogue was aimed at containing each other but not promoting bilateral cooperation.

The high-level two-plus-two dialogue between China and the US in strategic and economic scopes will not only follow the current of power-to-power relations, but also comply with both countries' common aspiration, via communications and talks, to evade potential risks, seek cooperation and realize a win-win result. The dialogue, if it achieves success, will create a new model for co-existence and common development between an emerging power and an established hegemony in modern history. It also sends a message to the rest of the world that China and the US are not preoccupied with a so-called Group of Two or a co-governance, but are committed to be equal partners.

To ensure the dialogue's success, China and the US should try to find common grounds in the spirit of equal consultation and mutual respect. On the issues of climate change and emission reduction, Washington should understand Beijing's stance that the world's largest developing country undertakes common but differentiated responsibility and that attention should not be placed on a country's total emission alone; it should be placed on per capita emission. Also, the US should extend to China necessary technological assistance for the sake of its emission reduction. In the scope of security, China should show its willingness to cooperate with the US on anti-terror activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Washington should also care about Beijing's concerns over Tibet and Xinjiang.

The author is director of the Institute of American Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations

California passes key budget deal

2009-07-26T09:54:00.002+06:30

Mr Schwarzenegger talks about the budget in a Twitter video

BBC | California lawmakers have passed a plan to plug a state deficit of $26bn (£17bn), and sent the deal to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign into law.

The package of 31 bills passed the Senate, but the Assembly rejected two key measures that cut income by $1.1bn.

A plan for offshore oil drilling and a proposal to take petrol tax from local governments were vetoed.

The resulting loss of income will force Mr Schwarzenegger to make deep cuts in public spending to close the gap.

Financial hole

The deal already includes $15bn in spending cuts in education and healthcare, and calls for pay cuts for state workers. It also accelerates the collection of some taxes.

The package was agreed on Monday by the Republican governor and leading lawmakers from California's Democrat-controlled legislature after more than two weeks of intense negotiations.

The deal amounts to a revision of a budget package approved by California's lawmakers in February that was designed to plug the state's deficit until the summer of 2010.

But the recession has sharply reduced California's revenues, forcing the state to send promissory notes, or IOUs, to thousands of contractors who provide state services.

Earlier this month, Mr Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency after legislators missed a deadline to agree a budget.

Free Suu Kyi and the US May Invest in Burma: Clinton

2009-07-23T10:27:00.003+06:30

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) waves as she arrives for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Regional Forum on the Thai island of Phuket. (Photo: AFP)

By WAI MOE | PHUKET, Thailand—If the Burmese military junta releases Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the United States of America wants to expand its relations, including investments, with Burma, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday in Phuket.

“We are calling for release of Aung San Suu Kyi, which we believe is very important. It is so critical that she be released from prosecution she has been under,” she told reporters at press conference.

“And if she is released, there is an open up opportunity, at least for my country, to expand relations with Burma, including investment in Burma. But it is up to the Burmese leadership,” Clinton added.

The Clinton administration has imposed economic sanctions on Burma since 1997, preventing new US investment in the military-ruled country. However, the US set tighter economic sanctions that banned importing goods from Burma in 2003, following the attack on Suu Kyi’s convoy by regime-backed thugs at Depayin.

At Wednesday’s press conference, Clinton repeated US concerns over the military cooperation between Burma and North Korea, and the pursuit of “offensive weapons including nuclear weapons.”

“There are a lot of issues that Burma raises for the entire region, not just the United States,” she said. “I think it is important to encourage the Burmese leadership to begin to open up, to pursue the model other Asean countries are following.”

Clinton told reporters at the press conference in Bangkok on Tuesday that the Obama administration is concerned about the increasing military ties between the two tyrant led countries, North Korea and Burma.

“We know that there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously. It would be destabilizing for the region,” Clinton said. “It would pose a direct threat to Burma’s neighbors. And it is something, as a treaty ally of Thailand, that we are taking very seriously.”

Clinton, who is now attending the Asean Regional Forum in Phuket, said that Burma is moving in the opposite direction from other Southeast Asian countries, which, like the United States, want the Burmese military government to change their behavior.

Clinton added that the Burmese junta would have a better future by turning away from isolation and treating their own people better.

During an interview on “The Nation” Thai television network, Clinton said Asean should consider expelling Burma from the regional bloc if the junta fails to release pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi.

Before flying to Phuket, Clinton met several activists in Bangkok, including well-known Burmese activist and Magsaysay award winner, Dr Cynthia Maung.

After fleeing the 1988 uprising, Cynthia Maung set up a clinic in Mae Sot where she and her medical workers treat refugees and migrant workers. The US former first lady Laura Bush visited her clinic in August 2008.

Barack Obama shoots down the F-22 fighter jet

2009-07-23T10:21:00.002+06:30

(photo: AP / J. Scott Applewhite)

Brad Norington / The Australian | BARACK Obama has been handed a political victory on defence spending, after the US Senate yesterday voted to stop further funding of the air force's F-22 fighter jet.

In a hard-fought debate that ended with a 58 to 40 vote, the US President won support for his argument that continued production of the twin-engine stealth plane would be wasteful.

Mr Obama relied on support from John McCain, his Republican opponent in last November's presidential election, who moved an amendment in the Senate to strike from the 2010 defence budget the $US1.75 billion ($2.14bn) allocated for seven more F-22s.

The decision means the US Air Force will receive no more of the jets, known as the Raptor, after the current order for 187 is filled.

Yesterday's Senate vote is politically significant. The administration had lobbied hard to block further production, and Mr Obama had threatened what would have been his first veto.

Most resistance came from both Democrat and Republican senators anxious about the impact of cutting the jobs of 25,000 people directly employed in producing the Raptor, and an additional 70,000 indirectly involved.

On Monday, Mr Obama wrote to Senator McCain to seek his support, saying: "We do not need these planes. To continue to procure additional F-22s would be to waste valuable resources that should be more usefully employed to provide our troops with weapons that they actually do need."

The President hailed the Senate result, saying the alternative would have been an inexcusable waste of money at a time when the US was fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit.

"I reject the notion that we have to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on outdated and unnecessary defence projects to keep this nation secure," he said.

Three months after the Rudd government was elected in late 2007, then defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon expressed interest in having the option to buy F-22s for the RAAF.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates played down the proposal, citing the difficulty caused by a US law that prohibits export sales of the Raptor. Dr Gates and the Pentagon believe the F-22 is not suited to unconventional warfare typical of recent conflicts.

The F-22, which has special radar-evading capability, is designed for combat against other fighter jets. It has not been used by the US during recent conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan because opposing forces have fought on land in towns or rough mountainous terrain, and without air forces.

The F-22, produced by Lockheed Martin, has also attracted criticism because it requires 30 hours of maintenance for every hour of flying time.

Dr Gates believes the US should instead focus on buying F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. The F-35 is a new-generation single-engine jet built for attacking targets on the ground.

Clinton’s Burma Message

2009-07-23T10:19:00.001+06:30

By AUNG ZAW | Hillary Clinton’s message to Burma was loud and clear, but it is still unclear what direction exactly the US will take in trying to engage the troubled country.

Upon arriving in Bangkok, the latest troubles in Burma were waiting for the US secretary of state to comment on. However, Burma is no stranger to Clinton, since her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was the first world leader to impose economic sanctions on Burma in 1997. Today, Burma is still the region’s recalcitrant, rogue regime, regularly putting its allies and partners in the hot seat of world opinion.

Clinton said that the US is deeply concerned by the reports of continuing human rights abuses in Burma, and particularly by actions that are attributed to the Burmese military concerning the rape and abuse of young women.

It was anticipated that the US would condemn Burma’s poor human rights record, the ongoing Aung San Suu Kyi trial and the slow process of democratization. But the abuse of women’s rights was a new message on Clinton’s part.

Also, she highlighted the growing military ties between Burma and North Korea. Before her arrival, there were persistent reports of Burma’s secret military mission to North Korea and Burma’s keen interest in buying ballistic missiles.

“Now, we know that there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously,” Clinton said. “It would be destabilizing for the region. It would pose a direct threat to Burma’s neighbors.”

Her remarks won’t go down well with Burma’s main backers, China and Russia, who insist that Burma doesn’t pose a direct threat to regional peace and security.

The leaked 37-page document with photographs of the regime’s No 3 man, Gen Shwe Mann, who made a secret mission to Pyongyang in November via China, evidently show that the clandestine military ties between the two nations are well-advanced.

Informed sources confirmed that US and Japan intelligence agencies had been well-informed about Burma’s secret mission to North Korea long before the story broke in the exiled media.

Last month, Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two Japanese nationals for allegedly trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Burma that could be used in missile development.

In any case, Clinton’s clearly worded message will definitely set off alarm bells in Naypyidaw. It’s also known that the paranoid generals have sought advice from North Korea to build tunnels and military facilities in case of a foreign invasion or proxy war. The military regime is actively seeking jet fighters, sophisticated air defense systems and anti-aircraft, in order to have top-line defensive and offensive military weapons. The leaked document led to the arrest of several Burmese civilians and military officials by the authorities.

US strong advocate for democracy

Since the current regime came into power in the bloody coup of 1988, the US has been a strong ally of Burma’s democracy movement and political opposition groups.

Under President Barack Obama, US policy on Burma is undergoing a review. State Department officials said that the ongoing trial of Aung San Suu Kyi will affect the policy review. It is predicated that the new policy will be mixture of carrots and sticks. The US would like to exercise more diplomatic leverage to engage the hermit-like regime while maintaining targeted sanctions as sticks. The US is also interested in developing a more concentrated regional approach, involving the key countries in Southeast Asia.

Skeptics say that since the regime has little interest in engagement with the West, it will be difficult to depart from the previous policy adopted by the Bush administration.

Perhaps hopefully, it was once believed that the generals might want to seek a more normal relationship with the West, since Obama came into power. However, the ongoing bizarre trial of Suu Kyi and the North Korean military connection doesn’t go down well with the US, the EU or most Asean countries.

That doesn’t leave the US or other countries much room to try to normalize the relationship.

In the past, the absence of active US engagement in trying to solve the complicated problems of the region has paved the way for China’s rise in influence. China is Burma’s and North Korea’s major ally.

Thus, aside from Burma, the good news is Clinton’s broader message that the US is ready to resume an active leadership role, working in cooperation with Asian nations.

Clinton is already offering little carrots. Unlike former President Bush who called Burmese leaders tyrants, Clinton’s message to the generals was mixed.

“Our position is that we are willing to have a more productive partnership with Burma if they take steps that are self-evident,” she said.

It’s unlikely the generals will follow-up on Clinton’s offer, even though they are listening carefully.

Clinton’s concern about the growing military ties between Burma and North Korea is well noted.

Dealing with the generals is like dealing with an infectious disease that could spread quickly—often it is hard to prescribe the right treatment—and nobody can predict the outcome.

The international community must work together to find the right prescription that will cure Burma’s ills. The danger is that its problems not only affect it, but they could spill over and infect the entire region.

Is Myanmar seeking nukes to ‘challenge’ U.S.?

2009-07-22T09:06:00.004+06:30

Expert: N. Korea may be helping junta set up uranium-related facilities

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | BANGKOK, Thailand - The recent aborted voyage of a North Korean ship, photographs of massive tunnels and a top secret meeting have raised alarm bells that one of the world's poorest nations may be aspiring to join the nuclear club — with help from its friends in Pyongyang.

No one expects military-run Myanmar, also known as Burma, to obtain an atomic bomb anytime soon, but experts have the Southeast Asian nation on their radar screen.

"There's suspicion that something is going on, and increasingly that cooperation with North Korea may have a nuclear undercurrent. We are very much looking into it," says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

The issue is expected to be discussed, at least on the sidelines, at this week's ASEAN Regional Forum, a major security conference hosted by Thailand. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with representatives from North Korea and Myanmar, will attend.

Alert signals sounded recently when a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, headed toward Myanmar with undisclosed cargo. Shadowed by the U.S. Navy, it reversed course and returned home earlier this month.

It is still not clear what was aboard. U.S. and South Korean officials suspected artillery and other non-nuclear arms, but one South Korean intelligence expert, citing satellite imagery, says the ship's mission appeared to be related to a Myanmar nuclear program and also carried Scud-type missiles.

The expert, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said North Korea is helping Myanmar set up uranium- and nuclear-related facilities, echoing similar reports that have long circulated in Myanmar's exile community and media.

Meanwhile, Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two Japanese nationals last month for allegedly trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Myanmar that could be used to develop missiles.

Military muscle
And a recent report from Washington-based Radio Free Asia and Myanmar exile media said senior Myanmar military officers made a top secret visit late last year to North Korea, where an agreement was concluded for greatly expanding cooperation to modernize Myanmar's military muscle, including the construction of underground installations. The military pact report has yet to be confirmed.

In June, photographs, video and reports showed as many as 800 tunnels, some of them vast, dug in Myanmar with North Korean assistance under an operation code-named "Tortoise Shells." The photos were reportedly taken between 2003 and 2006.

Thailand-based author Bertil Lintner is convinced of the authenticity of the photos, which he was the first to obtain. However, the purpose of the tunnel networks, many near the remote capital of Naypyitaw, remains a question mark.

"There is no doubt that the Burmese generals would like to have a bomb so that they could challenge the Americans and the rest of the world," says Lintner, who has written books on both Myanmar and North Korea. "But they must be decades away from acquiring anything that would even remotely resemble an atomic bomb."

David Mathieson of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, who monitors developments in Myanmar, says that while there's no firm evidence the generals are pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, "a swirl of circumstantial trends indicates something in the nuclear field is going on that definitely warrants closer scrutiny by the international community."

Disguised flour mill
Albright says some of the suspicion stems from North Korea's nuclear cooperation with Syria, which now possesses a reactor. Syria had first approached the Russians, just as Myanmar did earlier, but both countries were rejected, so the Syrians turned to Pyongyang — a step Myanmar may also be taking.

Since the early 2000s, dissidents and defectors from Myanmar have talked of a "nuclear battalion," an atomic "Ayelar Project" working out of a disguised flour mill and two Pakistani scientists who fled to Myanmar following the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack providing assistance. They gave no detailed evidence.

Now a spokesman for the self-styled Myanmar government-in-exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, says that according to sources working with the dissident movement inside the Myanmar army, there are two heavily guarded buildings under construction "to hold nuclear reactors" in central Myanmar.

Villagers in the area have been displaced, said spokesman Zinn Lin.

Andrew Selth of Australia's Griffith University, who has monitored Myanmar's possible nuclear moves for a decade, says none of these reports has been substantiated and calls the issue an "information black hole."

He also says Western governments are cautious in their assessments, remembering the intelligence blunders regarding suspected weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Alarm bells
A U.S. State Department official, speaking on customary rules of anonymity, said he would not comment on intelligence-related matters such as nuclear proliferation.

"I don't want that to be seen as confirmation one way or the other. Obviously, any time that a country does business with North Korea we're going to watch to see what that is," the official said.

Alarm bells about Myanmar's aspirations have rung before. In 2007, Russia signed an agreement to establish a nuclear studies center in Myanmar, build a 10-megawatt nuclear research reactor for peaceful purposes and train several hundred technicians in its operation.

However, Russia's atomic agency Rosatom told The Associated Press recently that "there has been no movement whatsoever on this agreement with Burma ever since."

Even earlier, before the military seized power, Myanmar sought to develop nuclear energy, sending physicists to the United States and Britain for studies in the 1950s. The military government established a Department of Atomic Energy in 2001 under U Thaung, a known proponent of nuclear technology who currently heads the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Myanmar is a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and under a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, it is obligated to let the U.N. watchdog know at least six months in advance of operating a nuclear facility, agency spokesman Ayhan Evrensel said.

Evrensel said the Vienna-based IAEA has asked Myanmar to sign a so-called "additional protocol" that would allow agency experts to carry out unannounced inspections and lead to a broader flow of information about Myanmar's nuclear activities.

The regime has remained silent on whatever its plans may be. A Myanmar government spokesman did not respond to an e-mail asking about Russian and North Korean involvement in nuclear development.

'Childish'
In a rare comment from inside Myanmar, Chan Tun, former ambassador to North Korea turned democracy activist, told the Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine, "To put it plainly: Burma wants to get the technology to develop a nuclear bomb.

"However, I have to say that it is childish of the Burmese generals to dream about acquiring nuclear technology since they can't even provide regular electricity in Burma," the Myanmar exile publication quoted him last month as saying.

Some experts think the generals may be bluffing.

"I would think that it's quite possible Yangon would like to scare other countries or may feel that talking about developing nuclear technologies will give them more bargaining clout," said Cristina-Astrid Hansell at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "This is not unreasonable, given the payoffs North Korea has gotten for its nuclear program."

Russian pupils to have choice of religion, ethics

2009-07-22T08:56:00.003+06:30

The proposal is part of a Kremlin effort to teach morals to young Russians

Alexander Nemenov / AP

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev looks on during his meeting with the leaders of Russia's main religious denominations at the Barvikha presidential residence outside Moscow on Tuesday.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | BARVIKHA, Russia - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced a pilot project Tuesday that will require schoolchildren to take classes in religion or secular ethics.

The proposal is part of a Kremlin effort to teach young Russians morals in the wake of a turbulent period of uncertainty following the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union.

Medvedev said preteen students at about 12,000 schools in 18 Russian regions would take the classes. They will be offered the choice of studying the dominant Russian Orthodox religion, Islam, Buddhism or Judaism, or of taking an overview of all four faiths, or a course in secular ethics.

Students and their parents must be allowed to choose freely, Medvedev said in addressing top clerics and officials at his residence outside Moscow. "Any coercion, pressure will be absolutely unacceptable and counterproductive," he said.

Classes may be expanded
By 2012, the classes might be expanded nationwide, Medvedev said. The pilot project includes about 20 percent of Russia's schools.

The offer of a choice appeared aimed to ease concerns that Russian Orthodoxy will be forced on schoolchildren as the church gains influence and tightens ties with the state.

Mandatory classes in Orthodox culture were introduced in a few Russian regions three years ago, but they alarmed adherents of other confessions who said religion has no place in schools in a secular state. The classes also were criticized as being reminiscent of the forced study of communism or scientific atheism during Soviet times, with one mandatory ideology being substituted with another.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has long pushed for the introduction of Orthodox classes in schools, but he was careful not to criticize the president's initiative. "The free choice and alternatives could serve as the basis for a system" of religious classes, he said.

Medvedev emphasized that the classes will include only "the largest of Russia's traditional religions" — Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. He omitted other faiths, such as Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, which the Orthodox Church accuses of proselytizing.

Complaints from the nonreligious
Some nonreligious Russians complain that the church has tailored its doctrine to suit the government, which has justified Russia's retreat from Western-style democracy by saying the country has a unique history and culture.

Church and state are officially separate under the post-Soviet constitution, but Orthodox leaders seek a more muscular role for the church, which has served the state for much of its 1,000-year history.

The Russian Orthodox Church counts in its congregation more than 100 million people in Russia and tens of millions elsewhere. But polls show that only about 5 percent of Russians are observant believers.

Mumbai gunman describes indoctrination

2009-07-22T08:36:00.005+06:30

Judge puts a gag order on latest testimony to prevent religious friction

Sebastian D'souza / AP

Ajmal Kasab walks through the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. Kasab, the lone surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks, admitted his role in the shooting Monday in a dramatic confession in an Indian court, reversing months of denials.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | MUMBAI, India - An Indian court that heard a stunning confession from the lone surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks put a gag order on his latest testimony — a message to his handlers in Pakistan and a description of the indoctrination he received before coming to India.

It is a rare moment of silence in what has been one of the best documented terror attacks in history, with video footage, cell phone intercepts, photographs, and witness accounts playing across the media for months.

The judge on Tuesday deferred a decision on whether to accept Ajmal Kasab's unexpected confession, which has complicated the already onerous task of defending a man whose image — he was photographed toting a gun and striding through Mumbai's main train station — quickly became an emblem of the attack.

Kasab, a Pakistani on trial in a special court, caught prosecution and defense lawyers by surprise Monday when he suddenly told the judge he wanted to plead guilty to the November attacks that left 166 people dead.

"All of a sudden my client, Ajmal Kasab, has pleaded guilty and given a thorough account before the court. It has become very difficult for me," his defense lawyer Abbas Kazmi told the Associated Press Tuesday.

"But if tomorrow the court decides the trial is to go on, then I will have to go on," he added.

Lawyer alleges insufficient access
Kazmi, who was appointed at the last minute after Kasab's original lawyer was dismissed, said he has not been granted sufficient access to his client nor sufficient time to wade through the 12,000 page case file to prepare a defense.

"I have not been able to get proper instruction from him on the case," Kazmi said. "I get 10 to 12 minutes every few days. That's under the watchful eye of all the guards. Ten to 15 police guards are hovering around us. It is not a peaceful surroundings to take legal instruction."

He said Kasab has grown depressed and "mentally frustrated" after months of solitary confinement.

Kasab said Monday that he confessed after months of denials because the Pakistani government has acknowledged that he — and two of the other attackers — were Pakistani citizens and had begun legal proceedings against five men who allegedly masterminded the attack on Mumbai.

Kasab, who does not have access to newspapers or television in prison, told the court Tuesday that he heard about the developments from his guards.

"Perhaps a picture was created that now there is no hope. Even Pakistan has disowned you. He must have been expecting Pakistan to say no, Kasab is an innocent man. Now Pakistan said yes, our own people were involved," Kazmi said.

In his statements to the court Monday and Tuesday, Kasab takes responsibility for much of the carnage during the three-day siege last November, confirming prosecution evidence, including video footage, guns, bombs, identity cards, witness testimony, and maps.

Kasab has signed each page of the court's record of his confession, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press.

Recruited by a Pakistani militant group
As part of his confession, he said he was recruited by a Pakistani militant group while he was looking for training to become a professional robber. He also described how he sprayed automatic gunfire at commuters at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station while a comrade hurled grenades during one of India's worst terrorist acts.

Continuing his testimony Tuesday, Kasab told the court his mandate was "to open fire at CST and hold people hostage on the upper floor."

"We were also directed to fire at the persons who came to free hostages," he said.

Kasab described the political and religious indoctrination he said he received from his handlers in Pakistan, but Judge M.L. Tahiliyani issued an order forbidding journalists from reporting his comments, saying it was not in the interest of communal harmony.

Religious friction is not uncommon
Religious friction is not uncommon here, and government officials as well as citizen groups worked hard to ensure that tensions between Hindus and Muslims did not erupt into violence after the November attack.

The judge also banned reporting of Kasab's message to his handlers.

Prosecutor Nikam said violations of the court's order would be punishable by imprisonment of up to three years.

Kasab faces 86 charges, including murder and waging war against India, which is punishable by death or life in prison. Two Indians, Fahim Ansari and Ahmed Sabauddin, are also on trial for allegedly providing maps that helped facilitate the attack.

Attack strained relations
The confession, which details his training in Pakistan and which Kasab says was made voluntarily, gives strength to India's charges that terrorist groups in neighboring Pakistan were behind the well-planned attack, and that Islamabad is not doing enough to clamp down on them.

The attack severely strained relations and put the brakes on a peace process between the nuclear-armed enemies.

The Press Trust of India reported Tuesday that a copy of Kasab's confession would be given to a court in Rawalpindi, Pakistan which is now trying five alleged Lashkar operatives who have denied charges that they played a role in the Mumbai attack. The news agency did not name its sources.

Kasab said Monday that four men — some of them known leaders of the Pakistan-based Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba — sent him and other fellow attackers to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan.

After spending six weeks sequestered in a safe house in Pakistan, where they were sternly warned not to disobey orders, they traveled by boat to Mumbai. Arriving Nov. 26, they unleashed three days of mayhem. The 10 gunmen, armed with automatic rifles and grenades, split into pairs and killed people at the railway station, a Jewish center, a hospital and two five-star hotels.

Kasab and Abu Ismail took a taxi to the railway station where they killed more than 50 people.

"I was in front of Abu Ismail who had taken such a position that no one could see him," Kasab told the court Monday. "We both fired, Abu Ismail and I. We fired on the public," he said.

Had intended to become robber
From the railway station, the two went to Cama hospital. A few more were killed there. The pair then went to Chowpatty beach in a hijacked vehicle where Ismail was killed and Kasab was captured after a shootout with police.

Kasab was treated for wounds and has since been held in solitary confinement in Mumbai's Arthur Road Jail, where the trial is being conducted.

As part of the confession, he told how he became involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba. He said he had become unhappy with his low wages as a shop assistant in the Pakistani town of Jhelum and left for Rawalpindi with the intention of becoming a professional robber.

While attending a festival in Rawalpindi, he and a friend decided to seek out the mujahedeen, who they thought could help train them as bandits. They went to a local bazaar and were directed to the local mujahedeen office, he said.

Colin Powell: Sotomayor shouldn't be labeled racist because of affirmative action stand

2009-07-07T08:41:00.002+06:30

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | WASHINGTON - Colin Powell, one of the nation's most prominent African-Americans, is going after people who attacked Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor because of her stand in favor of affirmative action.

(photo: Creative Commons / Martin Dürrschnabel)

Powell, who's from the same Bronx neighborhood in New York as Sotomayor, said she should face "a spirited set of hearings" in the Senate. But he said the federal appeals court judge, who would be the first Hispanic justice, shouldn't be condemned for ruling against white firefighters who contended they suffered reverse discrimination.

"What we can't continue to have is to have somebody like a Judge Sotomayor ... called a racist, a reverse racist and she ought to withdraw her nomination because we're mad at her," Powell said in an interview broadcast Sunday on "State of the Union" on CNN.

Powell made it clear that he was referring to critics outside the Senate.

"Fortunately, the senators who will sit on this hearing in the Judiciary Committee, after a few days of this kind of nonsense, said, `Let's slow down, let's examine her qualifications in the way we're supposed to at a confirmation hearing.'" The committee begins hearings July 13.

Powell said Sotomayor has "an open and liberal bent of mind, but that's not disqualifying. But she seems to have a judicial record that seems to be balanced and tries to follow the law."

Powell, a Republican who supported Obama, said his party still is not sensitive enough toward minorities.

He noted that Obama had a significant advantage with Hispanics and African-Americans in the November elections. He criticized Republicans who are not elected to office and "immediately shout racism" against Sotomayor, while accusing Powell of supporting Obama because both men are black.

"We still have a problem," he said.

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has called Powell "just another liberal," said he should become a Democrat and charged that Powell endorsed Obama based on race. Powell said Sunday that Limbaugh "doesn't decide who I am or what I am no more than I decide who he is or what he is."

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last Monday that white firefighters in Connecticut were unfairly denied promotion because of their race. The justices threw out a decision that Sotomayor had endorsed as an appeals court judge.

China arrests more than 1,400 after ethnic riots

2009-07-07T08:29:00.006+06:30

More than 150 people reported killed, hundreds hurt in Xinjiang region

David Gray / Reuters

Chinese soldiers wearing riot gear prepare to march in formation as they patrol the streets of Urumqi, Xinjiang region, in China on Monday.

NBC, msnbc.com and news services | URUMQI, China - Police have arrested 1,434 suspects in connection with the worst ethnic violence in decades in China's western Xinjiang region, which killed at least 156 people, state media reported Tuesday.

The arrests come amid a security clampdown on the region, with hundreds of paramilitary police with shields, rifles and clubs taking control of the streets of the capital, Urumqi, where the riots took place on Sunday.

The violence does not bode well for China's efforts to mollify long-simmering ethnic tensions between the minority Uighur people and the ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang — a sprawling region three times the size of Texas that shares borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries.

"We haven't had anything like this, really, ever," said Dru Gladney, a Uighur expert at the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California. "It really gives strong evidence of widespread unrest and discontentment."

Mobile-phone service and the social-networking site Twitter have been blocked, and Internet links also were cut or slowed down.

A nonviolent protest by 200 people was broken up in a second city, Kashgar, and the official Xinhua News Agency said police had evidence that demonstrators were trying to organize more unrest in Kashgar, Yili and Aksu.

It said police had raided several groups plotting unrest in Dawan township in Urumqi, as well as at a former race course that is home to a transient population.

Hans inundate region
The unrest in Urumqi began Sunday after 1,000 to 3,000 people gathered at the People's Square to protest the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a riot in southern China. Xinhua said two died; other sources put the figure higher.

Peter Parks / AFP - Getty Images

Chinese riot police patrol a street in Urumqi, in China's far west Xinjiang province, on Monday, following a deadly riot.

Many Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) haven't been wooed by the rapid economic development. Some want independence, while others feel they're being marginalized in their homeland. The Han — China's ethnic majority — have been flooding into Xinjiang as the region becomes more developed.

The government often says the Uighurs should be grateful for the roads, railways, schools, hospitals and oil fields it has been building in Xinjiang, a region known for scorching deserts and snowy mountain ranges.

'One big family'
A similar situation exists in Tibet, where a violent protest last year left many Tibetan communities living under clamped-down security ever since.

"The Han Chinese say we all belong to the same country. We're all part of one big family," said Memet, a restaurant worker who like other Uighurs declined to give his full name because he feared the police. "But the Han always treat us separately."

A Han Chinese shopkeeper, who only gave his surname Wang because the ethnic issue is so sensitive, disagreed. "Those who cause such trouble are criminals," he said. "They're never happy with what they have."

Sunday's violence was notable because it happened in Urumqi, which has been relatively peaceful and hasn't been a hotbed of religious or political agitation. In other restive Xinjiang cities, red propaganda banners are filled with slogans encouraging ethnic harmony. But most of the banners in Urumqi touted anti-drug and fire prevention campaigns.

The population of 2.3 million is also overwhelmingly Han Chinese in the city, a mixture of drab concrete apartment blocks and gleaming new office towers.

Uighur Gitmo prisoners sent to Bermuda
China labels some Uighur separatist groups as terrorists.

Four Uighur detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were recently released and relocated to Bermuda despite Beijing's objections because U.S. officials have said they fear the men would be executed if they returned to China. Officials have also been trying to transfer 13 others to the Pacific nation of Palau. The men were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001, but the U.S. later determined they were not "enemy combatants."

7 GIs killed in Afghanistan attacks

2009-07-07T08:25:00.002+06:30

Four of the soldiers involved in training Afghans in north, spokesman says

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | KABUL - Bombs and bullets killed seven American troops throughout Afghanistan Monday, officials said, as thousands of U.S. Marines continued with their massive anti-Taliban offensive in the south.

A suicide car bomber also blew himself up outside the gate of the main NATO base in the region, killing two civilians and wounding 14 other people.

In an effort to protect Afghans, American troops also recently received new guidelines limiting use of airstrikes in order to minimize civilian casualties that threaten local support of foreign forces’ presence.

The seven American deaths came as thousands of U.S. Marines continued with their major offensive against the Taliban in Helmand province, a southern militant stronghold and hub of the vast Afghan drugs trade. It is the biggest U.S. military operation since the ouster of the Taliban from power in 2001.

Four U.S. soldiers died when their vehicles struck a roadside bomb in Kunduz province in the north, said Navy Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo, a U.S. military spokesman. The dead were training Afghan forces, Naranjo said.

Militants stepping up operations
In comparison to the country’s south and east, northern Afghanistan is relatively quiet. But roadside and other insurgent attacks have been increasing in the last few years, as the militant’s step up their operations.

In the south, meanwhile, another explosion killed two more American troops, Naranjo said, without providing details of the exact location of the blast.

Another American soldier died of wounds sustained during a firefight Monday with militants in the east of the country, a U.S. military spokesman said, without providing other details.

The Taliban have made a violent comeback in the last three years following their ouster from power in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. The militants now have effective control of large chunks of the volatile south and east of the country, undermining Afghanistan’s government.

Some 500 Marines out of the group of 4,000 participating in the Helmand offensive have moved into the province’s Khan Neshin area, a Marine statement said Monday.

“This is the first time coalition forces have had a sustained presence so far south in the Helmand River valley. Khan Neshin had been a Taliban stronghold for several years before Afghan and coalition forces arrived and began discussions with local leaders several days ago,” it said.

In the southern province of Kandahar, meanwhile, a suicide car bomber blew himself up outside the outer gate of the main NATO base in the region, killing two civilians and wounding 14 other people.

Those wounded near the gates of Kandahar Airfield included 12 civilians and two Afghan soldiers, said Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai, the top military commander for southern Afghanistan.

New guidelines to protect civilians
In an attempt to minimize civilian deaths in coalition military operations, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, issued new guidance to forces in Afghanistan, saying that he expects them to “scrutinize and limit” the use of airstrikes against residential compounds “and other locations likely to produce civilian casualties.”

McChrystal has said he hopes to produce a cultural shift in the military so that troops don’t see the use of massive firepower as their first priority but rather the protection of Afghan civilians. McChrystal’s new guidelines went into effect last week, and officials released a declassified version Monday.

“We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories — but suffering strategic defeats — by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people,” the new order says.

McChrystal said that the Taliban cannot defeat U.S. and NATO forces but that “we can defeat ourselves.” The directive allows soldiers to fire on residential compounds when it’s necessary for self defense.

Civilian deaths caused by U.S. and NATO military operations have long been a source of friction between President Hamid Karzai and the West. Such deaths alienate Afghan villagers, causing a loss of support for the Afghan government and international mission.

A NATO helicopter, meanwhile, made an emergency landing in the southern Zabul province, a spokesman for the military alliance said. There were casualties among those onboard but Lt. Commander Chris Hall did not have further details.

The incident was not caused by insurgent fire, Hall said.

Ethnic clashes kill 140, hurt 828 in China's west

2009-07-06T20:55:00.009+06:30

Government blames Muslim Uighurs; new protest reported in 2nd city

Shen Qiao / Xinhua via AP

Firefighters put out a fire on a bus in Dawannanlu Street in Urumqi, on Sunday.

NBC | URUMQI, China - Violent street battles killed at least 140 people and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit China's western Xinjiang region in decades, and officials said Monday the death toll was expected to rise.

Two bloodstained women are seen on a street in Urumqi, the capital of China's Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, in this frame grab taken from a broadcast by China Central Television, on Sunday.

Police sealed off streets in parts of the provincial capital, Urumqi, after discord between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority erupted into riots. Witnesses reported a new protest Monday in a second city, Kashgar.

Columns of paramilitary police in green camouflage uniforms and flak vests marched Monday around Urumqi's main bazaar — a largely Uighur neighborhood — carrying batons, long bamboo poles and slingshots. Mobile phone service was blocked, and Internet links were also cut or slowed down.

A video grab from Xinjiang TV shows a crying woman carrying her baby next to a soldier in Urumqi, on Monday.

A witness who left Urumqi on Monday morning said there was a large presence of Chinese troops in parts of the city.

China's state Council Information Office also reiterated that foreign journalists were welcome to travel to Xinjiang and report what they saw, suggesting the authorities believe they have the situation under control, NBC News’ Adrienne Mong reported from Beijing.

Rioters on Sunday overturned barricades, attacking vehicles and houses, and clashed violently with police in Urumqi, according to media and witness accounts. State television aired footage showing protesters attacking and kicking people on the ground. Other people, who appeared to be Han Chinese, sat dazed with blood pouring down their faces.

There was little immediate explanation for how so many people died. The government accused a Uighur businesswoman living in the U.S. of inciting the riots through phone calls and "propaganda" spread on Web sites. Exile groups said the violence started only after police began violently cracking down on a peaceful protest complaining about a fight between Uighur and Han factory workers in another part of China.

The unrest is another troubling sign for Beijing at how rapid economic development has failed to stem — and even has exacerbated — resentment among ethnic minorities, who say they are being marginalized in their homelands as Chinese migrants pour in.

Echoes of Tibet
Thousands of people took part in Sunday's disturbance, unlike recent sporadic separatist violence carried out by small groups in Xinjiang. The clashes echoed the violent protest that rocked Tibet last year and left many Tibetan communities living under clamped-down security ever since.

Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang, a sprawling region rich in minerals and oil that borders eight Central Asian nations. Many Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) yearn for independence and some militants have waged a sporadic, violent separatist campaign.

Uighurs make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but not in the capital of Urumqi, which has attracted large numbers of Han Chinese migrants. The city of 2.3 million is now overwhelmingly Chinese — a source of frustration for native Uighurs who say they are being squeezed out.

About 1,000 to 3,000 Uighur demonstrators had gathered Sunday in the regional capital for a protest that apparently spun out of control. Accounts differed over what happened, but the violence seemed to have started when the crowd of protesters refused to disperse.

Arrests, access to information cut
The official Xinhua News Agency reported hundreds of people were arrested and checkpoints ringed the city to prevent rioters from escaping. Mobile phone service provided by at least one company was cut Monday to stop people from organizing further action in Xinjiang.

Internet access was blocked or unusually slow in Urumqi on Monday. Videos and text updates about the riots were removed from China-based social networking sites such as Youku, a YouTube-like video service, and Fanfou, a Chinese micro-blogging Web site similar to Twitter.

A Fanfou search for posts with the key word Urumqi turned up zero results while Twitter, which is hosted overseas, yielded hundreds of comments in Chinese and English. Major Chinese portals such as Sina.com, Sohu.com and 163.com relied solely on Xinhua for news of the event and turned off the comment function at the bottom of the stories so people could not publicly react.

The demonstrators Sunday were demanding justice for two Uighurs killed last month during a fight with Han Chinese co-workers at a factory in southern China.

Dispute over land, wealth
Uighur activists and exiles say the millions of Han Chinese who have settled here in recent years are gradually squeezing the Turkic people out of their homeland.

But many Chinese believe the Uighurs are backward and ungrateful for the economic development the Chinese have brought to the poor region.

Wu Nong, director of the news office of the Xinjiang provincial government, said more than 260 vehicles were attacked or set on fire in Sunday's unrest and 203 shops were damaged. She said 140 people were killed and 828 injured in the violence.

She did not say how many of the victims were Han or Uighurs.

Xinhua said several hundred people had been arrested in connection with the riot and police were searching for about 90 other "key suspects." It also quoted a local police chief as saying the death toll was expected to rise.

Uighur exiles condemned the crackdown.

"We are extremely saddened by the heavy-handed use of force by the Chinese security forces against the peaceful demonstrators," said Alim Seytoff, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Uyghur American Association.

"We ask the international community to condemn China's killing of innocent Uighurs. This is a very dark day in the history of the Uighur people," he said.

The association, led by a former prominent Xinjiang businesswoman now living in America, Rebiya Kadeer, estimated that 1,000 to 3,000 people took part in the protest.

Businesswoman blamed for unrest
Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said in a televised address early Monday that Uighur exiles led by Kadeer of caused the violence, saying, "Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on July 5 in order to incite, and Web sites such as Uighurbiz.cn and Diyarim.com were used to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda."

A government statement quoted by Xinhua said the violence was "a pre-empted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country."

Ilham Tohti, a Uighur economics professor at Central Nationalities University in Beijing and founder of Uighurbiz.cn — one of the implicated Web sites — said "the relevant authorities" were questioning him about his Web site.

His site has become a lively forum for many issues about Chinese rule in Xinjiang.

Xinjiang's top Communist Party official, Wang Lequan, called the incident "a profound lesson learned in blood" and said authorities "must take the most resolute and strongest measures to deal with the enemies' latest attempt at sabotage."

"We also must expose Rebiya and those like her ... we must tear away Rebiya's mask and let the world see her true nature."

Seytoff dimissed the accusations against Kadeer. "It's common practice for the Chinese government to accuse Ms. Kadeer for any unrest" in Xinjiang, he said.

The clashes Sunday in Urumqi echoed last year's unrest in Tibet, when a peaceful demonstration by monks in the capital of Lhasa erupted into riots that spread to surrounding areas, leaving at least 22 dead. The Chinese government accused Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of orchestrating the violence — a charge he denied.

Students reportedly attacked
Seytoff said he had heard from two sources that at least two dozen people had been killed by gunfire or crushed by armored police vehicles just outside Xinjiang University.

Mamet, a 36-year-old restaurant worker, said he saw People's Armed Police attack students outside Xinjiang University.

"First they fired tear gas at the students. Then they started beating them and shooting them with bullets. Big trucks arrived, and students were rounded up and arrested," Mamet said.

Wang Kui, an official with the Foreign Affairs Department at the university, said she aware of no such incident. She said no students from the university were among those killed or injured.

"We are not allowing students to come and go because the situation is chaotic at the moment," Wang said. "All the students are at school, and we are taking care of them. But we are not clear about what's been going on outside."

Labeled as terrorists
China labels some Uighur separatist groups as terrorists.

Four Uighur detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were recently released and relocated to Bermuda despite Beijing's objections because U.S. officials have said they fear the men would be executed if they returned to China. Officials have also been trying to transfer 13 others to the Pacific nation of Palau. The men were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001, but the U.S. later determined they were not "enemy combatants."

Previous mass protests in Xinjiang that were quelled by armed forces became signal events for the separatist movement. In 1990, about 200 Uighurs shouting for holy war protested through Baren, a town near the Afghan border, resulting in violence that left at least two dozen people dead.

In 1997, amid a wave of bombings and assassinations, a protest by several hundred Uighurs in the city of Yining against religious restrictions turned into an anti-Chinese uprising that left at least 10 dead.

In both cases pro-independence groups said the death tolls were several times higher, and the government never conducted a public investigation into the events.

Chinese floods kill 15, displace 550,000

2009-07-06T10:29:00.001+06:30

Reuters – People make their way across a flooded street on a makeshift raft in Rongshui, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous

REUTER | BEIJING (Reuters) – Flooding and heavy rain in southern China have forced 550,000 people to evacuate their homes and killed at least 15, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

The heavy rains that have raged for four days across southern provinces have destroyed houses, flooded crops, cut power, damaged roads and caused rivers to overflow.

Worst hit was Guangxi, where 285,800 people were moved out of their homes. Parts of the region were experiencing the worst flooding since 1996.

Workers dug sluices to relieve pressure on the Kama reservoir dam in Guangxi's Luocheng county, where a 13.5 meerr (44 ft) section gave way under the weight of the water on Saturday.

Chen Zhangliang, vice chairman of Guangxi region, said the sluices should alleviate the danger from the dam in a few days.

Crops on 103,400 hectares were damaged and 3,600 homes had collapsed by 11:40 p.m. EDT on Sunday, with total damage in Guangxi estimated at 1.34 billion yuan ($196.5 million), Xinhua said, citing the regional civil affairs department.

The rain also flooded 62 schools in Guangxi, where 300 students were trapped in one boarding school alone. Local authorities had managed to restore power supplies and deliver food and drinking water.

After four days of torrential downpours, the rain began to subside in some parts of Guangxi on Sunday, but local authorities warned of more flooding as river levels remained high.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Valerie Lee)

U.S., Russia try to repair frayed relationship

2009-07-06T10:15:00.004+06:30

Arms control expected to dominate summit; goal is for new treaty this year

Dmitry Lovetsky / AP

Russian traditional wooden dolls, Matreshkas, depicting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barak Obama, are displayed by a street vendor in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 3, a few days ahead of Obama's visit Russia.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | MOSCOW - Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev end a seven-year hiatus in U.S.-Russian summitry on Monday, with each declaring his determination to further cut nuclear arsenals and repair a badly damaged relationship.

Both sides appear to want to use progress on arms control as a pathway to possible agreement on trickier issues, including Iran and Georgia, the tiny former Soviet republic. Those difficulties and others have soured a promising linkage in the first years after the Cold War and pushed ties between Moscow and Washington to depths unseen in more than two decades.

In advance of Obama's arrival, a White House official told reporters Sunday the presidents expect to announce progress on negotiations that could lead to a treaty to replace the START I agreement, which expires Dec. 5.

More broadly, the U.S. wants to use the summit to overhaul the U.S.-Russian relationship.

"It's not, in our view, a zero-sum game, that if it's two points for Russia it's negative two for us, but there are ways that we can cooperate to advance our interests and, at the same time, do things with the Russians that are good for them as well," Obama's top assistant on Russia, Michael McFaul, said in a presummit briefing.

Medvedev said in an Internet address that the two powers "need new, common, mutually beneficial projects in business, science and culture. He added, "I hope that this sincere desire to open a new chapter in Russian-American cooperation will be brought into fruition."

Use of Russian airspace
Two things appear certain:

The Russians have said they will agree to allow the United States to use their territory and air space to move munitions and arms to U.S. and NATO forces fighting Taliban Islamic extremists in Afghanistan. The Kremlin announced the deal days before the summit as a sweetener for Obama.
A directive for negotiators to work toward a START I replacement. Both sides are agreed in principle to cut warheads from more than 2,000 each to as low as 1,500 apiece.

Those deals could be announced at an Obama-Medvedev news conference Monday afternoon after the leaders' scheduled four-hour meeting.

There's been an apparent hardening on both sides over a proposed U.S. missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. Those differences could stall or even preclude an agreement of strategic nuclear warheads. That could kill the hoped-for extension of those talks next year to include cuts in delivery vehicles: long-range missiles, submarines and bombers.

On Friday, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the current prime minister and former president, said the Kremlin would not negotiate a replacement to START I unless Obama clarified plans for the defense system to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The U.S. contends it's designed to protect U.S. allies in Europe from a potential nuclear attack by Iran. The Russians see it as a way of weakening their offensive nuclear strike potential that is are arrayed against the U.S. arsenal. Obama has been cool to the program, which former President George W. Bush pushed hard.

"The whole issue of missile defense from my perspective is focused on defense of Europe," said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Obviously, the Russians see it differently. So I think we're going to have to work our way through that."

The White House said Sunday that if an agreement comes too late for Senate ratification by Dec. 5, it would look for ways to enforce some aspects on an executive level while waiting for ratification.

Obama to meet with Putin
Obama's schedule include an hourlong meeting with Putin on Tuesday. Protocol does not demand he visit the prime minister.

"Prime Minister Putin still has a lot of sway in Russia, and I think that it's important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev, that Putin understands that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated, that it's time to move forward in a different direction," Obama said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press.

Most analysts see Putin as still holding the real reins of power in Russia. Obama said in the interview, "I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."

Putin responded quickly. "We don't know how to stand so awkwardly with our legs apart," he said in televised remarks. "We stand solidly on our own two feet and always look into the future."

One of the most difficult issues expected in the Putin meeting is his fierce anger at neighboring Georgia. Last August, he sent soldiers, tanks and warplanes to crush the Georgian military after Georgia's leader sought to retake a breakaway region that wants to reunite with Russia.

Putin appears dead set on re-establishing Russia's power and sphere of influence in the former Soviet republics. At the same time, NATO has expanded eastward to include some of those countries. The alliance also is working with Georgia and Ukraine, another former republic, on possible membership in NATO.

Gorbachev meeting
In an interesting scheduling twist, Obama also is to see former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who negotiated an end of the Cold War with former President Ronald Reagan. There's also to be a second Medvedev meeting after Obama speaks to new graduates of the New Economic School. It remains unclear if the Russian leaders, who control all television outlets, will allow national broadcast of the speech.

The White House bills the address as the third of four this year on his vision of a new world order. The first was during his visit to the Czech Republic when he laid out a security agenda and concern about nuclear proliferation. After that, he went to Egypt to reach over the heads of leaders of Muslim countries as he sought to improve the U.S. image with the people of the Islamic world.

The last of the foreign policy addresses was planned for Ghana, the final stop on this Obama trip.

The president does face a major challenge in convincing the Russian people that he genuinely wants to use his office for the betterment of the world even as he seeks to promote a U.S. agenda. He is not well-known to the Russians and most polls show a distrust of the American leader. He certainly enjoys none of the vast popularity lavished on him in Europe and many other places.

U.S. misread scale of Honduran rift

2009-07-06T10:07:00.004+06:30

Zelaya's ties to Venezuela's Chávez was source of concern for opponents

Miraflores Palace / Reuters

Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya, left, is welcomed by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez after his arrival in Nicaragua on Monday.

By William Booth and Juan Forero / Washington Post | TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Although the U.S. government knew for months that Honduras was on the brink of political chaos, officials say they underestimated how fearful the Honduran elite and the military were of ousted President Manuel Zelaya and his ally President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

Rumors were buzzing in the capital that the fight between Zelaya and his conservative opponents had reached the boiling point, but diplomatic officials said the Obama administration and its embassy were surprised when Honduran soldiers burst into the presidential palace last Sunday and removed Zelaya from power.

U.S. diplomats had been trying to broker a compromise and were speaking to both sides hours before the coup. For decades, Washington has trained the Honduran military, and senior U.S. officials say they did not think that the Honduran military would carry out a coup.

The overthrow, and the new Honduran government's vow to remain in power despite international condemnation, is President Obama's first test in a region that had grown distant from the United States.

The crisis also pits Obama's nuanced approach to diplomacy against that of an often bellicose rival, Chávez, who has taken center stage in the showdown by threatening to overthrow the government that took over from Zelaya.

The new Honduran leaders said Saturday that they will not yield to demands made by the Organization of American States to allow Zelaya to return to power. The caretaker president, Roberto Micheletti, threatened that Zelaya will be arrested if he returns Sunday as promised alongside Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and other Latin American leaders.

The Catholic Church appealed for calm. Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez went on the airwaves to beg Zelaya to "give us room for a peaceful resolution" and warned that, if Zelaya comes back Sunday, there could be "a bloodbath."

A shift to the left
When Zelaya, 56, a wealthy rancher whose family made its fortune from timber, was elected president in 2005, he was a middle-of-the-road populist from one of Honduras's two major parties. But as his presidency progressed, Zelaya veered to the left and was in constant conflict with business groups, lawmakers from his own party, the news media and the army.

"Over the last year, Zelaya's positions moved to the left. He pushed social programs and more attention for the poor who have no work," said Giuseppe Magno, the outgoing Italian ambassador. "This switch was not in line with the program he was voted in on. He was too close to Ortega and Chávez, a position the middle and upper classes did not appreciate."

But Zelaya saw it differently, often telling crowds that Honduras needed a fundamental shift to deal with poverty so grinding that 40 percent of the population lives on $2 a day or less. Honduras is, in fact, the third-poorest country in the hemisphere, and many residents continue to resent the often painful past involvement of the United States.

In announcing his country's affiliation with a Chávez-led alliance, Zelaya told crowds that it was designed to "make Hondurans a free people." He said that in joining the pact, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, Honduras did "not have to ask permission of any imperialists."

Zelaya increasingly spoke of the two nations of Honduras, one hopelessly poor, the other wealthy and uncaring. He began to argue for "people power," a kind of direct popular democracy.

When he toured the countryside, he staged rallies to ask the people what they wanted, and promised new bridges and clinics on the spot, giving away 100 Venezuelan tractors to farmers and speaking against an unnamed oligarchy he called the enemy of the people.

Zelaya angered the business community when he raised the minimum monthly wage for Hondurans by 60 percent. Many companies responded by firing workers. Other businesses ignored the decree.

When U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens arrived last year, Zelaya postponed the ceremony allowing the newly arrived diplomat to present his credentials. He fought with his Congress, insisting that lawmakers accept his nominees to the Supreme Court. He refused to sign the budget and he stalled on dozens of bills approved by the Congress. All along, Zelaya grew closer to Latin America's leftist leaders, especially Chávez. He traveled frequently to Venezuela, where he stood beside Chávez as he gave fiery speeches railing against capitalists.

But Adolfo Facussé, a business leader who had been friends with Zelaya, said the president at first explained his alliance with Venezuela in pragmatic, economic terms.

"He said a year ago that he was interested in ALBA," said Facussé, speaking of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which included Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua. "I said it's mostly an anti-American enterprise, and he said that's not what interests me. There is assistance being offered."

Facussé said that he invited Venezuelan Embassy officials to meet with Honduran industrialists, adding that it became clear to him and other businessmen that Honduras could benefit from Venezuela's largess, including the sale of fuel on preferential terms, a line of credit from Caracas and outright gifts, such as tractors.

"I reviewed the deal, and I thought it was good," Facussé said of Zelaya's plan to bring Honduras closer to Chávez and his cheap fuel.

'So brazen, so upfront'
European diplomats who know Zelaya and how he operates described him as a populist nationalist, not an leftist ideologue.

Those familiar with the growing crisis said concern about Chávez by political opponents was driven by an outsize fear that Venezuela had diabolical designs on Honduras -- and would have implanted Chávez's economic system and style of governance had Zelaya been allowed to carry out his referendum.

"It was the same scheme Chávez had in Venezuela," said Benjamin Bogran, the new minister of industry and commerce. "Chávez considers Honduras to be inside his orbit."

Elizabeth Zuñiga, a member of Congress and leader of the Nationalist Party, said: "Little by little, step by step, he was looking at the South Americans for help and guidance. They were his new best friends." Zuñiga, who supports the ouster, said, "What I believe we were seeing was the evolution of a democratic dictatorship."

Armando Sarmiento, a member of the ousted Zelaya cabinet, who is in hiding, said the fear of Chávez and his influence on Zelaya lead to the coup. "The right wing believes the myth that President Zelaya was going to seek an extra term. But this was not true."

Sarmiento pointed out that Zelaya wanted to help the country's poor, not nationalize industries or create a socialist economy. "President Zelaya had very strong arguments with these people, what the president called the oligarchy, the media, the special interests. There were campaigns of hatred against the president."

Doris Gutiérrez, a member of Congress who opposes the coup, said: "The sector here that supports the move against Zelaya has never been so open, so brazen, so upfront before. The situation is going to become more dangerous."

'The political nucleus'
Analysts familiar with Zelaya's cabinet said he was influenced by a small group of close aides. They included Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas, viewed as an ally of Ortega's Sandinista government in Nicaragua and daughter of a popular progressive politician who fled the country after a military coup in 1963. Others included Milton Jiménez, a former foreign minister who analysts said had the most influence on Zelaya; Enrique Flores Lanza, Zelaya's minister of the presidency and considered the most radical of his aides; and Aristides Mejía, Zelaya's vice president.

"They were the political nucleus, the ideologues of Manuel Zelaya," said Jorge Yllescas, an economist who is a member of Civic Union, a coalition of 60 groups opposed to Zelaya. "They were the ones who really had the ideological line. When Mel got to the presidency, he was liberal, but within a year he had a different tendency from his own ideology."

But the same diplomats are puzzled about exactly what Zelaya was after in his attempt to rewrite the constitution. The boiling point came when Zelaya began to push for a national survey, a kind of nonbinding referendum for a constitutional assembly that could led to a new law that allowed a president to serve more than one term. But Honduras's lengthy, sometimes contradictory document contains language that makes a person a traitor for even suggesting such a change.

As Zelaya pressed ahead with his plan to hold the vote last Sunday, the day of the coup, the leader of the Honduran military, Gen. Romeo Vásquez, balked, because the Supreme Court told him that the referendum was illegal. Zelaya tried to fire Vásquez, which further riled the military.

"Look, we're democratic and here we respect the ideologies of other countries," said Gabriela Nuñez, the new finance minister. "But we do not want to change our system of government."

U.N. chief: N. Korea's actions deeply regrettable

2009-07-06T10:04:00.001+06:30

‘They have to fully comply,’ Ban says ahead of six-party nuclear talks

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | GENEVA - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday that North Korea's launch of ballistic missiles this weekend is deeply regrettable and unhelpful for peacefully resolving tensions over its nuclear weapons program.

Ban said he was concerned about the missile test firings and that they defied U.N. resolutions.

"The (U.N.) Security Council has shown a very strong, unified message to DPRK on nuclear test as well as missile launch," Ban said, using the official name for North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "They have to fully comply with this rather than taking such kind of defiant measures."

Pyongyang's launch of seven missiles into waters off its east coast Saturday is "totally unhelpful in resolving all the issues peacefully through dialogue," said Ban, who spoke to reporters in Geneva ahead of a meeting by the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

The missile firings came amid growing concerns over Pyongyang's firepower and they drew international condemnation.

"North Korea now has closed all the doors — all the doors of communication and dialogue. I'm deeply concerned about current status," said Ban.

He said he hoped that the nations taking part in the so-called six-party nuclear talks will try to revive dialogue with North Korea. The talks involved the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia.

Pyongyang in April quit the talks and vowed to restart its nuclear facilities to protest a U.N. statement condemning the firing of a long-range rocket it said was a satellite.

North Korea has engaged in a series of acts this year widely seen as provocative. In late May it carried out its second underground nuclear test following the first in late 2006.

Closer Burma-N Korea Ties a Serious Cause for Concern

2009-07-01T21:17:00.001+06:30

By YENI | Recent evidence of the closer relationship between Burma and North Korea exposes the complete failure of the Burmese regime’s diplomacy and foreign policy in the face of increasing pressure by international and regional governments.

With Burma losing face internationally and regionally since the ruling junta put Aung San Suu Kyi’s on trial, the Burmese generals are anxious for their traditional ally to stand by their side.

The relationship with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) deteriorated when Thailand, as current Asean chair, issued a public statement in May on Suu Kyi's trial, saying the "honor and credibility" of its troublesome member, Burma, was "at stake."

Moreover, Singapore Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, whose country is one of Burma's biggest foreign investors and has close relations with the Burmese junta, said bluntly that the general election planned for 2010 must be inclusive and that the opposition National League for Democracy, led by Suu Kyi, must be part of the process of national reconciliation.

Goh, chairman of the city state’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, also said that Singapore investors will likely wait until after the election before pouring any more money into the country.

Although it is too early to say that closer ties with North Korea could be a response to assertions on Burma by the Asean members, it is clear that recent developments have greatly added to worries that the two pariah states are becoming a double threat to regional security.

The mysterious voyage of the North Korean cargo ship, the Kang Nam 1, which is believed to be heading for Burma, and is currently being shadowed by the US Navy, and the leaking of documents and video footage showing caves and tunnels being constructed in Burma with the help of North Korean engineers, have raised suspicions in the region that the facilities are connected to Burmese plans for a nuclear reactor.

Some analysts said that fears about the acquisition of unconventional weapons by Burma are not totally unfounded. "Given North Korea's nuclear trade to Syria, its attempts to sell Scuds to Myanmar [Burma], and its ongoing sales of conventional arms, there's reason to be worried about a WMD relationship," Michael Green, a Burma expert and former adviser to then-President George W Bush told the Wall Street Journal recently.

For several years, the Burmese junta has been trying to foster relations with countries which are antagonistic towards the US—especially North Korea, which has constructed 8,200 underground facilities, including 180 munitions factories, to house key government offices and military command posts in case of war.

Observers say that the Burmese ruling generals take a hostile approach to the US because of its economic sanctions and have become paranoid about a possible US invasion of their country. These are the main reasons for speeding up a reengagement with North Korea.

In 1983, North Korean spies operating in Burma planted a bomb at the Martyr’s Mausoleum in Rangoon, where the country's forefathers lie, killing 18 South Korean officials, including four ministers.

Burma broke all ties with North Korea as a result. However, in its anxiety to procure the arms and technology to develop its armed forces, the Burmese regime later resumed diplomatic ties without securing any apology from North Korea.

Although it is not yet clear whether the tunneling projects in and around Napyidaw are to afford the paranoid junta protection from its own people or from the outside world, it proved again that the top Burmese generals have dug themselves deeper into isolation over the past few years.

The generals' bunker-mentality has been in place since 1962 when they took power from Burma's last democratically-elected government. Burma always defends itself as a sovereign state, surrounded by friendly neighboring countries that seek Burma’s natural resources, but sanctioned by Western countries led by the US. In fact, the junta usually uses that as a shield behind which it can continue its human rights violations, confident that its neighbors will treat them as Burma’s "internal affair."

Now Burma shows its true colors by developing ties with North Korea, one of the world’s most treacherous countries, which threatens to unleash a nuclear war.
So it is not too early to say that the closer relationship developing between Burma and North Korea should alert the world to a state of affairs that can only deepen global and regional tensions.

Pitting Karen against Karen in a Bloody War

2009-07-01T21:10:00.003+06:30

A DKBA soldier and a KNLA soldier lie side by side with leg injuries at Mae Sot Hospital. (Photo: Alex Ellgee/ The Irrawaddy)

By ALEX ELLGEE | MAE SOT — The tragedy of the Burmese army forces and Karen clashes over the past month can be seen here in Mae Sot Hospital where many Karen soldiers lie injured, many the victims of land mines or artillery fire.

Having fought against each other on their own land, they now rest next to each other in hospital beds on foreign soil

Blood soaked bandages and faces grimacing in pain can be seen in the hospital’s orthopedic ward.

The injured are soldiers in the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), the Karen breakaway ceasefire group, and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).

Muzzo, a 26-year-old KNLA soldier, lost both hands when a land mine accidentally went off during a rainstorm. (Photo: Alex Ellgee/ The Irrawaddy)

“I had to fight for peace and to look after my people” said Muzzo, a 26-year-old KNLA soldier. “We cannot live under the SPDC killing and hurting our people; we never want to get to that situation, so we must fight to stop them.”

As DKBA and Burmese regular army troops advanced on the KNLA Brigade 7 recently, Muzzo said he was laying down a landmine in a last line of defense. The rain was so heavy that an accident occurred and the mine exploded, causing him to lose both of his hands and the sight in his left eye.

Despite his wounds, he said that he wasn’t sad and that any blood a KNLA soldier gives “is with his heart for the peace and love of Karen people.” His hatred of the Burmese army runs deep. He said his brother and sister were starved to death by the Burmese army and despite his wounds he owes it to them to continue to do whatever he can for the KNLA.

Lying in the bed next to Muzzo was a 23-year-old boy, his face clearly in agony. Part of his foot had been destroyed by a landmine, and he had just gone through his second round of surgery to repair the limb. As his left foot was bound tightly in bandages, his right foot was exposed and his father gently caressed the foot.

When asked how he felt to see his son in such a condition, he said he was proud that his son was a loving man.

“He gave his foot for the people of Karen State so they could live in peace,” he said.

Nearby were wounded DKBA soldiers, also casualties of landmines. Like the KNLA soldiers, they had first gone to Mae Tao Clinic where they were referred to Mae Sot Hospital for surgery on their limbs.

One DKBA soldier clutched his right knee to ease the pain from the recent amputation of his leg. His wife helplessly looked on, her face in total exhaustion.

Having fought with the KNLA for 25 years, the soldier said he was forced to switch sides to the DKBA when his family’s village was overrun by DKBA soldiers. He said he had no choice.

“If I didn’t go to the DKBA, my family would have starved,” he said quietly.

In another area of the ward, a DKBA soldier lay in a bed beside a KNLA soldier. They chatted like old friends. The DKBA soldier, 43 years old, had serious injuries to his thigh, having stepped on a landmine while collecting bamboo to make a shelter.

“I didn’t want to join the DKBA” he said. “I was forced into the army. I don’t want to shoot Karen people, but I am ordered to do it so there is nothing I can do. All I really want to do is to farm and grow rice in peace”

Many of the wounded KNLA soldiers empathized with the DKBA soldiers. The KNLA soldier lying next to the DKBA soldier said he didn’t hate DKBA soldiers.

“DKBA soldiers only change from KNLA because they are hungry and need food,” he said. “I am not angry at them. They are KNLA in their hearts, but their leaders tell them what to do. Their leaders just want money, power and hero status. The soldiers just want food and peace, but because the leaders give them food they have to listen to them.”

The tragedy of Karens fighting against Karens mirrors the futility of war everywhere, and underscores the utterly desperate condition of many of the Karen people who oftentimes will switch armed allegiances because of the access to food.

It's uncertain what lies ahead for the DKBA and the KNLA troops. Many analysts are predicting that the KNLA will lose the area it has controlled. Some observers are also talking about dark plots against the DKBA leadership by the Burmese army itself. Many people speculate that the Saturday ambush of a senior DKBA commander, San Pyote, was carried out by Burmese forces.

“It’s not above what the Burmese are capable of, and they may have done it to create more misunderstanding between the KNLA and DKBA,” said David Takapaw, vice president of the KNU. "There were no KNLA troops in the area. But there were many Burmese."

A Karen soldier who was nearby when the ambush occurred said he only remembers hearing bullets flying everywhere. He now lies on a hospital bed with bullet wounds on his arms.

He is surrounded by fellow Karens, soldiers caught up in a complex conflict that exploits their love for their people while pitting them one against the other.

NKorea Ship 'Turned Around'

2009-07-01T21:04:00.002+06:30

By KWANG-TAE KIM / AP WRITER | SEOUL — A North Korean ship under scrutiny for more than a week by the US Navy has changed course and was heading back the way it came, US officials said as Pyongyang warned Wednesday it will take military action if anyone attempts to search its vessels.

The Kang Nam I cargo ship docks at the port in Rangoon, Burma in 2007. (Photo: AFP)

The Kang Nam 1—originally believed bound for Burma with suspicious cargo on board, possibly illicit weapons—turned around and headed back north on Sunday, two US officials said on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

The US officials, speaking in Washington on Tuesday, said they do not know where the ship is going. But it was some 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Hong Kong on Tuesday and was heading north, one official said.

The North Korean ship is the first vessel monitored under UN sanctions aimed at punishing the regime for conducting an underground nuclear test in May.

The new resolution seeks to clamp down on North Korea's trading of banned arms and weapons-related material by requiring UN member states to request inspections of ships suspected of carrying prohibited cargo.

The communist nation has said it would consider interception of its ships a declaration of war. On Wednesday, North Korea's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper renewed the warning.

"Touching our ships constitutes a grave military provocation against our country," the paper said in commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. "These acts will be followed immediately by self-defensive military countermeasures."

The North's warning did not specifically mention the Kang Nam 1, which the two US officials said has been moving very slowly in recent days in a possible sign it is trying to conserve fuel. The resolution prohibits UN members from providing fuel to ships suspected of carrying banned items.

The officials said they did not know what the ship's turnaround means, nor what prompted it.

Burma's authorities had informed the North Korean ambassador that the UN member nation would not allow the Kang Nam to dock if it was carrying weapons or other banned materials, a report from Washington-based Radio Free Asia said.

A US delegation headed by envoy Philip Goldberg, meanwhile, headed Wednesday for Beijing to discuss the UN sanctions, the State Department said. Goldberg, a former ambassador, is in charge of coordinating the sanctions' implementation.

China's cooperation in enforcing the sanctions against neighboring North Korea, which counts Beijing as its main ally, is seen as crucial to encouraging the North back to nuclear disarmament talks the regime abandoned in April.

Pyongyang also threatened in April to launch a long-range missile. A no-sail zone remains in effect off North Korea's east coast through July 10. An announcement cited "military drills" but there were concerns the defiant nation might test-fire short- or medium-range missiles, or even a long-range missile, in further violation of Security Council resolutions.

However, there was no sign of an imminent missile launch Wednesday, an official at South Korea's Joint Chief of Staff said Wednesday. He asked not to be named, citing agency policy.

In Washington, meanwhile, the US Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions on Hong Kong Electronics, a company located in Kish Island, Iran, accused of involvement in North Korea's missile proliferation network.

That means any bank accounts or other financial assets found in the US belonging to the company must be frozen. Americans also are prohibited from doing business with the firm.

Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek and Jeannine Aversa in Washington contributed to
this report.

Burmese Internet Users Share Video, Documents about North Korea

2009-07-01T21:02:00.000+06:30

By MIN LWIN | Amid revelations about recent secret meetings between Burmese and North Korean leaders and growing concerns that the two countries may be cooperating in illegal weapons programs, a video showing the 1983 bombing of the Martyr’s Mausoleum in Rangoon has attracted strong interest among Burmese Internet users.

The video, which has been on the Web site Youtube for at least a year, has suddenly become a big hit among Burmese both inside and outside the country, reminding them of a savage incident that resulted in the severing of relations between the two countries two-and-a-half decades ago.

Apparently taken from Japanese news footage, the video shows a blast that killed 19 people, including 16 South Korean officials. The attack, by North Korean agents, was targeted at former South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan, who escaped death by being a few minutes late for a wreath-laying ceremony at the monument to Aung San and other assassinated leaders of Burma’s independence movement.

“The video footage is horrific, showing the killing and injuring of South Korean and Burmese officials. It reveals North Korea’s cruelty,” said an Internet user in Rangoon, Burma’s largest city.

The interest in the video comes amid growing evidence that Naypyidaw and Pyongyang are forging stronger military ties. Over the past two weeks, a series of documents have been leaked to exiled Burmese and international media organizations showing meetings between senior Burmese and North Korean military leaders.

“I am seriously wondering how these documents, including an MoU [Memorandum of Understanding] signed in North Korea, got out of Burma,” said one journalist in Rangoon.

The MoU appears in a top-secret document detailing a visit to North Korea by the Burmese junta’s No 3, Gen Thura Shwe Mann, and is related to North Korean technical assistance in the construction of a maze of tunnels in the Burmese regime’s capital of Naypyidaw.

Electronic copies of the MoU have been spreading widely among Internet users in Burma.

Some Burmese political analysts say they believe the documents were leaked by moderate military officials who are not happy with the Burmese senior leadership’s decision to restore diplomatic and military ties with North Korea.

“There are many moderate military officials who dislike what Snr-Gen Than Shwe did with North Korea, but they didn’t dare to criticize Than Shwe,” said a retired military official from Rangoon.

“Many military commanders don’t like North Korea, because North Korean agents killed members of a visiting South Korean delegation and Burmese officials on Burmese land,” he added. “These confidential documents may have come from military officials who don’t want diplomatic and military relations with North Korea.”

Burma’s ruling military council has been sending secret delegations to North Korea since 1999. A North Korean delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Park Kil-yon met with his counterpart, Khin Maung Win, in Rangoon in June 2001.

Win Tin, a prominent member of Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, said that the growing relationship between the two pariah states would likely pose serious challenges for the international community.

Quoting a Burmese proverb, he added: “It is look like saintly people in pursuit of virtue seek each other’s company.”

Yemen plane's black box located

2009-07-01T21:00:00.000+06:30

By Christine Muchiri / BBC | One of the black box flight recorders from the Yemeni plane which crashed in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday has been located.

Efforts to retrieve the recorder will begin during the day, the official added.

The plane came down in bad weather with 153 people on board. Only one survivor, a 14-year-old girl, has been found.

There were 66 French nationals on board the plane, which was flying from the Yemeni capital Sanaa to the Comoros.

Most of the plane's passengers had flown on a different Yemenia aircraft from Paris or Marseille before boarding flight IY626 in Sanaa.

"The black box's signal was located yesterday at 1630 local time (1230 GMT) by an aerial patrol, 40 km [25 miles] from Grande Comore," a spokeswoman for Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said.

A French vessel has been sent to the site to start recovery operations, she added.

The French transport ministry had earlier said the Airbus 310 plane had been banned from France because of "irregularities".

The crash was the second involving an Airbus aircraft in recent weeks. On 1 June an Air France Airbus 330 travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board.

Ban Says He’ll Urge Junta to Free Suu Kyi

2009-07-01T20:56:00.000+06:30

By ARKAR MOE | UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon assured reporters on Tuesday during a Tokyo stopover on his way to Burma that he will urge the Burmese military junta to release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, when he visits the country this week.

Speaking after talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone, he said he was aware of concerns about his July 3-4 visit coinciding with the trial of Suu Kyi, the main opposition leader, who has been under house arrest for a total of more than 13 years.

The UN Information Center in Rangoon said on Wednesday that it could not provide any details about Ban Ki-moon’s Burma schedule.

Suu Kyi, 64, is on trial in Rangoon on a charge of breaking the terms of her house arrest.

“It may be the case that the trial may happen during my visit in [Burma]. I am very much conscious of that. At the same time, to find the most appropriate timing has been a challenge for me, too,” Ban told reporters.

"I try to use this visit as an opportunity to raise in the strongest possible terms and convey the concerns of the international community of the United Nations to the highest authorities of the [Burmese] government," he added.

“We have received no notification yet from the Burmese authorities regarding a meeting with Ban Ki-moon.” said Ohn Kyaing, a member of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday.

Ban said he would press the Burmese government to carry out a range of political reforms.

"I consider that three of the most important issues for [Burma] cannot be left unaddressed at this juncture," Ban told reporters. “The first [is the] release of all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi."

“This is the commitment and concerns and aspiration of the international community. I am going to convey this strongly to Snr-Gen Than Shwe and other leaders,” he said.

Ban also plans to meet with political parties and ethnic groups and travel to the Irrawaddy delta region that was devastated by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008.

He visited Burma shortly after the cyclone, the first UN chief in 44 years to go there.

How to Stop North Korea's Weapons Proliferation

2009-07-01T20:50:00.000+06:30

Pyongyang's bellicose words provide all the legal justification we need to interdict its ships.
By The Wall Street Journal | At this moment the Kang Nam, a North Korean tramp freighter, is on the high seas tailed by a team of American destroyers and submarines and watched by reconnaissance satellites and aircraft. The vessel had cleared the Taiwan Strait at the end of last week as it headed south. Yesterday, it was reported to have turned back north toward the Chinese coast. On board, its cargo could contain plutonium pellets, missile parts or semi-ripe melons. In any event, Washington wants to know what is in the rusty ship's hold.

Why the interest in this particular vessel? The Kang Nam is a "repeat offender" and known to carry "proliferation materials." As an unnamed American official told Fox News this month, "This ship is presumed to be carrying something illicit given its past history." United Nations Security Council Resolution 1874, unanimously passed on June 12, broadened the concept of illicit cargoes as far as North Korea is concerned. It prohibits Pyongyang from selling arms, even handguns. The Kang Nam's U-turn is a sure sign that it is carrying contraband and is now seeking a safe port.

The Security Council, while banning Pyongyang's export of weapons, has not given U.N. member states the means of enforcing the new restrictions. Resolution 1874 calls upon countries to inspect North Korean cargoes on the high seas -- but only "with the consent of the flag State," in this case North Korea. Should Pyongyang refuse -- as it most certainly would -- a member state can, within the terms of the resolution, direct a vessel to "an appropriate and convenient port" for inspection by local officials. Should Pyongyang refuse to divert the ship, the resolution contemplates the filing of a report to a U.N. committee.

It looks as if Washington will file such a report soon. Last week, the U.S. promised China it would abide by the restraints imposed by Resolution 1874. This means, in all probability, that the U.S. will be reduced to watching the Kang Nam unload illegal cargo items at some port.

Yet Washington does not have to adopt such a feeble approach. The North Koreans have, inadvertently, given the U.S. a way to escape from the restrictions of the new Security Council measure. On May 27, the Korean People's Army issued a statement declaring that it "will not be bound" by the armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War. This was at least the third time Pyongyang has disavowed the interim agreement that halted hostilities in 1953. Previous renunciations were announced in 2003 and 2006.

The U.N. Command, a signatory to the armistice, shrugged off Pyongyang's belligerent statement. "The armistice remains in force and is binding on all signatories, including North Korea," it said immediately after the renunciation, referring to the document's termination provisions. That may be the politically correct thing to say, but an armistice as a legal matter cannot remain in existence after one of its parties, a sovereign state, announces its end. Today, whether we like it or not, there is no armistice.

Furthermore, there has never been a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. This means the U.S., a combatant in the conflict, as leader of the U.N. Command, is free to use force against Pyongyang. On legal grounds, the U.S. Navy therefore has every right to seize the Kang Nam, treat the crew as prisoners of war, and confiscate its cargo, even if the ship is carrying nothing more dangerous than melons. Because the Navy has the right to torpedo the vessel, which proudly flies the flag of another combatant in the war, it of course has the right to board her.

But does America have the will to do so? "Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something," President Barack Obama said in the first week of April, reacting to North Korea's test of a long-range missile. Unfortunately, the president's words have apparently meant little because Kim Jong Il's belligerent state has, since that time, detonated a nuclear device, handed out harsh sentences to two American reporters, and announced the resumption of plutonium production. North Korea has threatened nuclear war several times in recent days and this month sent one of its patrol boats into South Korean waters. American envoys, in response, have issued stern warnings, participated in meetings in the region, and engaged in high-level diplomacy in the corridors of the U.N. None of these measures, however, has led to the enforcement of rules or the punishment of the North Korean regime.

North Korea's words, in contrast, have meant something. It has, as noted, ended the armistice. Of course, no one is arguing that the nations participating in the U.N. Command resume a full-scale land war in Asia. Yet recognizing the end of the temporary truce would allow the U.S. to use more effective measures to stop the North Korean proliferation of missile and nuclear technologies. The Bush administration sometimes got around to warning Kim Jong Il about selling dangerous technologies but never did anything about it.

Instead, President George W. Bush outsourced the problem to the U.N. In October 2006, in response to the North's first nuclear detonation, the Security Council passed a resolution aimed at halting North Korean proliferation. Unfortunately, Beijing refused to implement the new rules, calling the measures unacceptable, even after voting in favor of them. Since then, more evidence has come to light of North Korea's transfer of nuclear weapons technologies to Iran and Syria.

The lesson of the last few years is that the U.N. is not capable of stopping North Korean proliferation. No nation can stop it except the U.S. Of course, ending North Korea's sales of dangerous technologies to hostile regimes will anger Pyongyang. This month, for instance, the North said that interception of the Kang Nam would constitute an "act of war."

Yet, as much as the international community would like to avoid a confrontation, the world cannot let Kim Jong Il continue to proliferate weapons. Moreover, it is unlikely that he will carry through on his blustery threats. The North Koreans did not in fact start a war when, at America's request, Spain's special forces intercepted an unflagged North Korean freighter carrying Scud missiles bound for Yemen in December 2002. Even though the Spanish risked lives to board the vessel, Washington soon asked Madrid to release it. At the time, the Bush administration explained there was no legal justification to seize the missiles.

Now, the Obama administration has no such excuse. There is definitely a legal justification to seize the Kang Nam. North Korea, after all, has resumed the Korean War.

Mr. Chang is the author of "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World" (Random House, 2006).

UN chief to visit Myanmar

2009-07-01T10:50:00.006+06:30

The detenion of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners is expected to top Ban's agenda [Reuters]

Al Jazeera | The UN secretary-general is to visit Myanmar on a trip aimed at urging the country's ruling generals to adopt political reforms and free all political prisoners.

Ban Ki-moon is to arrive on Friday, after accepting an invitation from Myanmar's military government, UN officials have said.

His visit follows a two-day trip to the country last week by Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations' special envoy to Myanmar.

Officials at Ban's office at UN headquarters in New York said he would seek a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, the country's detained opposition leader.

Her trial on charges of violating the terms of her house arrest is due to resume on the same day as the secretary-general's arrival in Myanmar.

The case against the 64-year-old Nobel peace laureate centres on an incident in which an American man secretly visited her lakeside home and stayed there for two days.

She faces up to five years in prison if found guilty.

Her trial is due to resume on July 3 at Yangon's Insein prison, where court proceedings have been held since May 18.

Call for dialogue

In depth

Profile: Suu Kyi's uninvited guest
Interview: Suu Kyi's US lawyer
Asean criticised over Myanmar
Video: Suu Kyi faces years in jail
Video: Charges 'a ploy'
Profile: Aung San Suu Kyi

Michele Montas, Ban's spokeswoman, told reporters that the UN chief plans to hold talks with officials from Myanmar's military government, including Senior General Than Shwe in the remote administrative capital of Naypyidaw, and would raise "a broad range of issues"..

Ban believes that "three of the most important issues for the future of Myanmar cannot be left unaddressed at this juncture of the country's political process," Montas said.

"They are gaining the release of all political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi, the resumption of dialogue between the military government and its opposition, and creating conditions for credible elections."

He also wants to "consolidate and build on" humanitarian aid efforts in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis - the country's worst ever disaster that left at least 138,000 dead.

Gambari, the UN chief's special envoy to Myanmar, has visited the country eight times since his appointment to the post.

But critics say none of his visit have proved effective in nudging the country's ruling generals towards significant political reform.

Exploited

Aung San Suu Kyi's trial is taking place behind closed doors in Yangon's Insein jail [EPA]

The US-based Human Rights Watch organisation, as well as some governments have tried to dissuade Ban from visiting Myanmar, saying that he could be exploited by the government, and his trip could be portrayed as legitimising Aung San Suu Kyi's trial.

The opposition leader has been held in jail or under house arrest for more than 13 of the past 20 years, much of that time at her lakeside Yangon home guarded by police.

Her trial has drawn widespread international condemnation of Myanmar's military government.

Opposition supporters and Western governments critical of the Myanmar have condemned the trial, labelling it a pretext for the ruling generals to keep Aung San Suu Kyi in detention during and beyond national elections it has scheduled for next year.

The government says the vote will mark the culmination of Myanmar's "road map to democracy," but critics say the regulations surrounding the election mean it will only cement military rule.