8
Monday 24th July, 2006
Asia's biggest security meeting will be dominated by Myanmar, North Korea
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
(AP) _ Asia's key annual security
meeting opens this week amid the
backdrop of North Korea's nuclear
threat and increasing regional frustration over Myanmar's failure to
restore democracy.
France, meanwhile, will sign a
friendship
treaty
with
the
Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, whose 10-member nations
gathered Sunday in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia's biggest city to prepare for
the annual gathering of their foreign
ministers
on
Tuesday
and
Wednesday.
Suicide bombers
kill 2 U.S.-led
coalition soldiers
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)
_ Suicide bombers killed eight
people, including two
Canadian coalition soldiers, in
Kandahar, officials said. A purported Taliban spokesman
claimed responsibility for the
blasts and warned of more as
NATO prepares to take control
of the volatile southern Afghan
region.
The two near-simultaneous
blasts Saturday highlighted the
continuing challenges confronting the U.S.-led coalition
and its Afghan allies as they
battle still defiant Taliban militants.
The southern regions, in
particular, have witnessed
some of fiercest fighting since
the toppling of the Taliban
regime in late 2001, and the
militants have stepped up suicide attacks and assaults on
Afghan and coalition forces as
NATO beefs up its forces in the
country to 16,000 from 9,700.
Saturday's attacks underscored the dangers there. In
the first bombing, a suicide
attacker rammed an explosiveladen car into a coalition vehicle, killing two soldiers and
wounding another eight
Canadians, said Maj. Scott
Lundy, a U.S.-led coalition
forces spokesman.
In the second, attack, which
occurred shortly after the first
about 30 meters (100 feet)
away, another attacker
approached a crowd of people
and detonated his vest, killing
six bystanders and wounding
another 20, said Dawood
Ahmadi, spokesman for the
governor of Kandahar, adding
that both bombers died in the
attack.
Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman,
said both suicide bombers
were Afghans and threatened
more suicide attacks and
ambushes against the U.S.-led
coalition and Afghan forces.
The attacks came on the
heels of strikes by Afghan
forces and the U.S.-led coalition in the southern Helmand
province over the past three
days that left 19 suspected
Taliban fighters dead, said Haji
Ghulam Muhiddin, the provincial governor's spokesman.
He said another 15 Taliban
were also wounded Saturday,
but managed to flee the area,
which is one of the two southern districts briefly captured
by militants earlier this week
and then reclaimed by coalition and Afghan forces. A
search was under way for those
who fled.
British army commanders
in NATO's peacekeeping force
in Afghanistan want to withdraw from isolated village outposts that have been the focus
of the resurgent and fierce
Taliban guerrilla attacks, the
Sunday Telegraph newspaper
in London reported.
U.S.
Secretary
of
State
Condoleezza Rice was also expected
to attend the regional meet on
Thursday, her first visit to the annual conference in three years.
For Washington and ASEAN, the
issue of member Myanmar's failure
to restore democracy and to free
democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi
has been building for years.
''ASEAN has a lot of other things
to do ... almost 99 percent are other
than Myanmar. But now Myanmar
seems to be always there and clouding the other issues out of the way,''
ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng
Yong was quoted as saying by
Malaysia's Bernama news agency.
The ministerial meeting will be
followed by a series of parleys culminating Friday in the ASEAN
Regional Forum, the region's biggest
security grouping that brings together friends and foes, including the
United States, North Korea, South
Korea, India, Pakistan and Australia
_ a total of 25 nations and the
European Union.
In the lead up to this year's meeting, momentum has been building
for ASEAN to host six-party talks on
the North Korean nuclear impasse
on the sidelines of the conference,
which will include all the negotiators
on the standoff _ the two Koreas,
United States, Japan, China and
Russia.
''If we could have a six-party
meeting in Kuala Lumpur, I would
be very happy to attend,'' Rice said
during a discussion with five Asian
journalists in Washington on Friday,
as reported by Bernama.
The talks are aimed at getting
North Korea to give up its nuclear
weapons program in return for aid,
War rages in
Lebanon
(AP) Israeli tanks, bulldozers and
armored personnel carriers knocked
down a fence and barreled over the
Lebanese border Saturday as forces
seized a village from the Hezbollah
guerrilla group.
The soldiers battled militants
throughout the day and raided the large
village of Maroun al-Ras in several
waves before finally taking control, military officials said. Tens of thousands of
Lebanese fleeing north packed into the
port of Sidon to escape the fighting as
the United Nations warned of a growing
humanitarian "disaster."
Early Sunday, warplanes for the first
time hit inside the port city of Sidon,
currently swollen with refugees,
destroying a religious complex that the
Israeli military said was used by
Hezbollah. Hospital officials said four
people were wounded.
A series of large explosions reverberated through Beirut in the early hours
Sunday as Israeli aircraft again pounded
Hezbollah's stronghold in the south.
Warplanes also hit targets in eastern
Bekaa Valley, firing missiles in the cities
of Hermel and Baalbek, witnesses said.
There was no immediate word on casualties in either strike.
The growing use of ground forces, 11
days into the fighting, signaled Israeli
recognition that airstrikes alone were
not enough to force Hezbollah out of
southern Lebanon. But a ground offensive carries greater risks to Israel, which
already has lost 18 soldiers in the recent
fighting. It also threatens to exacerbate
already trying conditions for Lebanese
civilians in the area.
Israeli military officials have said
they want to push Hezbollah beyond the
Litani River, about 20 miles north of the
border, with the Lebanese army deploying in the border zone. An Israeli radio
station that broadcasts to southern
Lebanon warned residents of 13 villages
to flee north by Saturday afternoon. The
villages form a corridor about 4 miles
wide and 11 miles deep.
With Lebanese fearing an escalation
in the battle, international officials
worked to end the conflict.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
was set to arrive in the Middle East on
Monday, though she ruled out a quick
cease-fire as a "false promise."
President Bush said his administration's diplomatic efforts would focus on
finding a strategy for confronting
Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian
backers.
"Secretary Rice will make it clear that
resolving the crisis demands confronting the terrorist group that
launched the attacks and the nations
that support it," Bush said in his weekly
radio address.
Italy, which has been trying to mediate an end to the fighting, said it would
hold a conference Wednesday to work
out the basis for a truce agreement. U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed a beefed-up U.N. force along the
Lebanese border, but Israel has called
for the Lebanese army to take control of
the area.
trade and security guarantees, but
negotiations stalled in November
when Pyongyang refused to attend
the discussions in protest over U.S.
allegations that the regime had
engaged in illicit financial activity.
In her comments Friday, Rice
blasted North Korea as ''a completely irresponsible state and very dangerous.''
Malaysia has said it is willing to
host the talks, but it is not clear if
North Korea would attend.
Military-ruled Myanmar will also
be under the spotlight for refusing to
A young evacuee from Lebanon with her mother smiles upon their arrival at the port
of Mersin, southern Turkey, early Sunday, July 23, 2006. Some 250 LebaneseAustralian evacuee arrived in Turkey's Mediterranean coastal city of Mersin. (AP)
Annan said the conflict had displaced at least 700,000 Lebanese so far,
and Israel's destruction of bridges and
roads has made access to them difficult.
"I'm afraid of a major humanitarian
disaster," he told CNN.
U.N. humanitarian chief Jan
Egeland said it would take more than
$100 million to help the displaced. He
said he would make an appeal "urging,
begging" the international community
for contributions.
As part of an effort to avert such a
crisis, Israel eased its blockade of
Lebanon's ports to allow the first
shiploads of aid to arrive. It remained
unclear how that aid would get to the
isolated towns and villages where the
fighting has been centered.
Israel has attacked mostly with
airstrikes, but small units have crossed
the border in recent days and fought
with Hezbollah fighters.
A far larger force of about 2,000
troops entered the area Saturday trying
to root out Hezbollah bunkers and
destroy hidden rocket launchers.
The troops, backed by tanks and
armored vehicles, raced past a U.N. outpost and headed into Maroun al-Ras.
Gunfire could be heard coming from the
village, and artillery batteries in Israel
also fired into the area.
"The forces have completed, more or
less, their control of the area of the village, Maroun al-Ras, and made lots of
hits against terrorists," said Maj. Gen.
Benny Gantz, chief of Israel's ground
forces. "It was a difficult fight that continued for not a short time."
Dozens of Hezbollah fighters were
injured or killed in the battle, Gantz
said. Hezbollah said two of its fighters
were killed Saturday, bringing the total
number of acknowledged Hezbollah
fighters killed to eight. Israel accuses
the group of vastly underreporting its
casualties.
The village was strategically important because it overlooked an area
where Hezbollah had command posts,
Gantz said. The forces seized a cache of
weapons and rockets in a village
mosque, he added. The village is
believed to be a launching point for the
rocket attacks on northern Israel.
At one point, a half-ton bomb was
dropped on a Hezbollah outpost, about
500 yards from the border and near the
village. Other positions were bombarded by Israeli gunboats off the coast.
About 32 residents took refuge at the
U.N. observers post. Nearly the entire
remaining population of the village which numbered about 2,300 before the
crisis broke out - were believed to have
fled, Lebanese security officials said.
Some of the invading forces returned
to Israel during the day. U.N. peacekeepers and witnesses said Israel also
briefly held the nearby village of
Marwaheen before pulling back.
The Israeli military said early
Sunday that the body of a fifth soldier
killed in a battle in south Lebanon has
been recovered. Five soldiers died
Thursday and four of their bodies were
recovered shortly after the battle. The
fifth was left behind because of heavy
gunfire.
About 35,000 fleeing Lebanese filled
Sidon as they searched for a place to
stay or a way to get farther north.
"I'm afraid a disaster is going to happen with all these refugees. There's no
aid, not from other nations, not from
Lebanon," Mayor Abdul-Rahman alBizri said.
Leaders of Ex-Soviet countries discuss
reform of troubled Moscow-led body
Indian prime Minister Manmohan Singh, left, and India's leading United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) Chairperson and Congress party President Sonia Gandhi, look on before
the start of a UPA meeting in New Delhi, India, Saturday, July 22, 2006. (AP)
MOSCOW (AP) – President Vladimir Putin
and leaders of seven other ex-Soviet nations
met in the Kremlin on Saturday to discuss
reforming a troubled regional body seen as
a key lever of Russian influence in the former Soviet Union.
Four presidents did not attend the twoday informal summit in Moscow _ a sign of
the divisions within the 12-nation
Commonwealth of Independent States.
The no-shows included the pro-Western
leaders of Ukraine and Georgia as well as
traditional Russian ally Armenia and the
authoritarian
leader
of
isolated
Turkmenistan, who does not usually come to
such events.
Putin, who has watched with concern at
the rise of Western-backed governments on
Russia's borders, said the meeting should
concentrate on plans to revamp the CIS,
which was born from the ashes of the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union.
''I know that the chairman has prepared a
report on the development of the organization. I suggest we focus on that,'' he said in
remarks shown on state television.
Few details of the proposed reforms
have been made public.
Kazakh
President
Nursultan
Nazarbayev, whose oil-rich Central Asian
nation holds the rotating presidency of the
CIS, said the aim of the reform was to make
the body ''satisfactory to us all, so that no
state feels hard done by.''
hand over power to a civilian government, defying international pressure
and snubbing friendly prodding
from fellow ASEAN members to
change its ways.
In a pointed reference to the
increasing embarrassment Myanmar
has become to fellow ASEAN members, Malaysian Foreign Minister
Syed Hami last week said the regional grouping ''has reached a stage
where it is not possible to defend its
member when that member is not
making an attempt to cooperate or
help itself.''
Chav's favourite,
Blair gift to Bush
by Jonathan Wynne-Jones
George W Bush showed
himself a master of street
slang at the G8 summit, with
his now famous greeting, "Yo,
Blair". So it seems only appropriate that the gift Tony Blair
chose personally for the US
President turns out to have
come from the preferred fashion house of "chavs".
The "sweater" referred to in
the "off-the-record" exchange
between the two leaders was,
according to sources, from
Burberry.
While the fashion label's
distinctive beige check has
become ubiquitous, the Prime
Minister opted for a conservative dark blue jumper.
Retailing at £90, the cotton
pullover is one of the cheapest
to be found in any Burberry
outlet. It is, however, part of
the new collection in the
Burberry London range.
It is described as "something that anyone from their
twenties upwards" can wear,
and assistants at Burberry's
store on New Bond Street,
London, said that it would be
Knitwear: Tony Blair gave George
Bush a Burberry jumper
equally appropriate for smart
or casual occasions.
Britain is in the middle of
one of its warmest summers
for decades, but Mr Blair may
have had Washington's cold
winter in mind. He seems to
have hit the right note. Mr
Bush was picked up by a
microphone telling his ally
that the gift was "awfully
thoughtful".
Burberry declined to comment and a spokesman for
Number 10 refused to confirm
or deny the colour and cost of
the jumper.
(C) The Telegraph
Group London 2006
Britain's pampered
pooches are too soft
to be police dogs
by Elizabeth Day
Britain's policemen have
long been used to handling
lazy youngsters with no ambition - but that was the human
variety. Now several forces
across the country are having
to import police dogs from
abroad because domestic
canines lack the requisite
motivation and drive.
Over recent years, dog handlers have found that many
adult canines in Britain prefer
an easy life as cosseted family
pets and fail to show the determination or physical energy
required of a police dog.
About 200 of the United
Kingdom's 2,200 police dogs mostly alsatians - are now
being imported from countries
including Slovakia, Holland,
Germany and Belgium at a
cost of £1,000-£4,000 per
dog.
The dog unit at South
Sonny's father was imported from
the Czech Republic
Wales Police has bought eight
Slovakian alsatians in recent
months because of the limited
selection available domestically.
The Surrey force has purchased five German dogs this
year and is expecting delivery
of three from Holland in
September.
(C) The Telegraph
Group London 2006
Prescott personally
wrote casino letter
by Chris Hastings, Arts and
raise suspicions that, despite
Media Editor
his persistent denials, Mr
John Prescott was facing
Prescott is actively involved in
fresh questions last night over
Government policy on superhis involvement in gambling
casinos.
policy after it emerged that he
In the letter, dated October
had exchanged letters with the
20 2005, Mr Prescott wrote:
leader of a council
"We have not ruled
bidding to win a
out the possibility of
super-casino
asking Parliament to
licence.
approve an increase
Documents
in the number of
obtained by The
regional casinos at
Sunday Telegraph
some future point.
under the Freedom
We will consider any
of Information Act
evidence that is safe
reveal that the
and prudent in reguDeputy Prime
latory terms to
Minister personally
increase the number
John Prescott
replied to Jan
of regional casinos to
Wilson, the leader
anything up to eight.
of Sheffield city council, after
In that context I will certainly
she wrote to him suggesting
note your suggestion that
that the number of such
there should be four regional
licences should be increased
casinos."
from one to four.
The disclosure of the letter
Instead of passing the letter
comes as Mr Prescott fights to
on to the Department for
save his job following a damnCulture, Media and Sport - the
ing sleaze inquiry by Sir Philip
department responsible for
Mawer, the Parliamentary
casino policy - Mr Prescott
Commissioner for Standards.
dealt with the matter personally.
(C) The Telegraph
The tone of the letter will
Group London 2006