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Rude Treatment From Clinton Aide

November 14, 2010 By

Earlier Thursday, Nimfa Ravelo of local radiio dzBB reported Binay’s narration of how a female aide of Clinton shouted at him and asked him to leave a VIP area at The Manila Hotel.

Binay, who was part of the welcoming party and had been cleared by the US Secret Service, complied but said there was no need to shout at him, and introduced himself as the Philippines’ Vice President.

Now, this rude behaviour should not suppose to happen, and because of it, we deplore this inhuman treatment of the country’s second highest official. [Read more...]

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Pakistan Nabs (Boston) Voice Of Taliban

September 12, 2009 By

muslim khan_The Pakistani army said it dealt a new blow to the Taliban insurgency, capturing a top commander who once worked in Boston as a housepainter.

The white-bearded militant, Muslim Khan, had helped spearhead the group’s two-year uprising in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan. With his choppy English, Mr. Khan also served as the Swat Taliban’s chief spokesman for local and foreign journalists. He was arrested earlier this week with four other commanders in their Swat hideout, according to Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, Pakistan’s military spokesman.

Gen. Abbas described the arrests as “a major breakthrough for the security forces.” Mr. Khan was considered to be one of the top three Taliban leaders in Swat.

The arrests are unlikely to significantly alter the course of the fighting. Pakistan’s army, despite a major offensive to rout the Swat Taliban, has failed to capture their leader, Mullah Fazalullah. The army has showed few signs of preparing for a full-scale ground offensive to uproot the militancy village by village in South Waziristan. Pakistani forces have instead relied on air strikes and artillery barrages on Taliban positions in South Waziristan.

Even in areas where the Taliban is on the run, such as Swat, security remains unsettled.

There have been a number of Taliban attacks in recent weeks, including an Aug. 30 suicide bombing that killed 15 police recruits in Mingora, the valley’s main town.

Still, the U.S. and Pakistan have registered some notable successes in recent weeks. Pakistan Taliban have struggled to reorganize following the death of their chief commander, Baitullah Mehsud, after a U.S. missile strike last month in the South Waziristan tribal region. U.S. officials say they believe the area is a center of operations for the al Qaeda terrorist group. Mr. Mehsud’s death triggered an internal battle for leadership, and Hakimullah Mehsud, another senior commander, was later named to succeed him.

Gen. Abbas declined to disclose the date or other details related to Mr. Khan’s capture. The announcement coincided with the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S., and could be seen as a response to criticism from Washington over the past eight years that Pakistan hasn’t done enough to destroy potential sanctuaries for terrorists.

Islamabad has often rebutted such charges by pointing to the number of Pakistani soldiers who have died fighting insurgents: about 1800 in the past eight years, according to the military. About 300 soldiers have been killed in the three-month-old Swat offensive.

On Friday, the Pakistani government released photos of two captured commanders, Mr. Khan and Mahmood Khan, stripped of their turbans, as part of efforts to publicize the army’s most recent success. The military says it has killed more than 2,000 insurgents in recent operations against the Taliban.

The government had offered a reward of $120,000 for the capture of Mr. Khan. The other men captured this week were lower on the hierarchy.

Mr. Khan, who is in his 50s, spent the late 1990s in the U.S., where he lived in Boston and painted houses for a living. He had worked in the early 1980s as a student activist for the Pakistan Peoples Party, which now rules the country, and later briefly joined one of the country’s Islamist religious parties.

By the time he reached Boston, his views on the West were uncompromising. In an interview this spring with The Wall Street Journal, he recalled telling a friend who was attending a college in New York at the time to abandon his studies because he would learn nothing. He said the U.S. education system did nothing but spread obscenity and immorality.

In the interview, Mr. Khan called the U.S. “the source of all the trouble for Muslims.”

He said he had a list of Pakistanis in Swat whom the Taliban planned to execute, including a woman who he said would be killed because her husband worked for the American army. It couldn’t be determined if the executions were carried out.

Speaking with British Channel 4 News in April, he complained about the presence of white Western women among forces for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “As long as these infidels are present in our land, it is our duty to fight them,” he said.

In recent months he called Pakistani journalists to warn them their reporting was biased against the Taliban, and they would punished.

After Mr. Khan returned to Pakistan in 2002, he claimed responsibility for several Taliban terrorist attacks. The militants eventually moved into the alpine getaway of Swat, and began enforcing a harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

Once a peaceful and relatively liberal region dotted with ski resorts and fruit orchards, the Swat Valley became a magnet for pro-al Qaeda militants. A large number of foreign fighters, including Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs, joined the militancy there, increasing the threat to Pakistan’s security.

Many in the U.S. government and the Pakistan government came to view the situation in the Swat Valley as a test case of Pakistan’s resolve. The Pakistani government initially struck a peace deal with the militants, but the Taliban soon began moving out of the valley and claiming new territory in the direction of Islamabad, the capital,

Mr. Khan, who had attended college in Swat, said at the time that the Taliban’s first responsibility was to establish Islamic law, or Shariah, in the Swat Valley to set an example.

After that, he said, “It is our responsibility to go and establish Shariah anywhere in the country. By Zahid Hussain, The Wall Street Journal.

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Amnesty International Presses China Over Fiji

September 8, 2009 By

amnesty international_FIJI was caught in “a downward spiral of human rights violations and repression”, Amnesty International’s Pacific researcher, Apolosi Bose, warned yesterday in launching a damning report on life under the military-installed government there.

Amnesty’s report urges international donors and investors to press the Suva military government – which has been in power for almost three years, and says it will not hold elections for a further five – to return to the rule of law.

“In particular, China, which has massively increased its financial assistance to Fiji since the 2006 coup, should use its influence to resolve the constitutional crisis,” the report says.

Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific deputy director, Donna Guest, said: “China has long claimed it doesn’t interfere in another country’s affairs, but in Fiji China has clearly favoured one side of a long political dispute, and in the process ignored the human rights situation.”

Mr Bose was in Fiji when the constitution was abrogated on April 10 after a Court of Appeal verdict declaring as unlawful military chief Frank Bainimarama’s seizure of power. He said he interviewed more than 80people from many organisations and backgrounds in researching the report.

Under the Public Emergency Regulations imposed in April, Amnesty says, “Fiji’s military and security forces retain absolute control over the country’s population, and soldiers and police enjoy complete immunity from prosecution for their actions, including serious violations of human rights.”

The organisation describes “a pattern of government interference in the judiciary, severe censorship of the media, and the harassment and arrests of government critics”.

Judges are now appointed by the President at his sole discretion without any professional or other criteria, says the report. And section 5 of the Administration of Justice Decree says the President’s abrogation of the constitution and decrees he promulgates cannot be challenged in any court.

The report describes a “climate of fear” in Fiji, and quotes a “human rights defender” as saying: “I am so frightened of what they will do to any of us if we speak out. This is not the time to protest, as they will surely hurt us. They have no restraint. Once they start, I fear for our staff and their families.”

Amnesty says eight soldiers and a policeman found guilty of beating 19-year-old Nadi youth Sakiusa Rabaka to death were released from custody after serving just six weeks, and a soldier convicted over the death of villager Nimilote Verebasaga served less than two weeks. All have been reinstated in their previous positions.

The report says the provisions of section 16 of the the emergency regulations – which include the capacity of the Permanent Secretary for Information, Neumi Leweni, to ban broadcasts or publications that “promote disaffection or public alarm” – have been used by the authorities “to arrest and deport journalists and severely censor the press, instilling fear among journalists”.

This has led to distortions, it says. For example, one news report said the EU supported the Fiji government, to which it would give funds. The EU complained that in fact the opposite was true.

Reports of civil unrest internationally – for instance, in Thailand – have been censored. Twenty journalists have been arrested in the past few months, and all have subsequently been released. Journalists have instead been ordered to start practising “the journalism of hope”, Amnesty says. By Rowan Callick, The Australian

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Iran Snubs Proposed Nuclear Talks

September 8, 2009 By

iran_Iran’s president has said that discussions over his country’s nuclear programme are “finished” and Tehran will neither back down nor negotiate further.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Tehran’s nuclear plans were an issue of rights, declaring that the country’s uranium enrichment efforts would continue.

“From our view point [discussion of] our nuclear issue is finished … we will never negotiate on the Iranian nation’s obvious rights,” he told his first news conference since he was sworn into office following a disputed re-election in June.

The comments come two weeks before the start of this year’s UN General Assembly meetings in New York and the deadline given by several Western nations for Tehran to respond to a proposal for talks.

‘Stalemate’

They also come as Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, admitted on Monday to a “stalemate” in efforts to resolve questions over Iran’s nuclear programme.

An August 28 report by the UN nuclear watchdog said Iran had granted the agency’s demand for tighter monitoring of its Natanz nuclear fuel production site and restored some IAEA access to a heavy-water reactor site of proliferation concern.

But it also said Iran had increased its number of installed centrifuge machines by 1,000 to 8,300, boosting potential enrichment capacity, and was still blocking an IAEA inquiry into allegations it has tried to “weaponise” the enrichment process.

Except for Iran’s two new gestures of co-operation, “on all … issues relevant to Iran’s nuclear programme, there is stalemate”, ElBaradei said in remarks opening a quarterly meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors on Monday.

In particular, he highlighted the blocked weaponisation inquiry, Iran’s refusal to suspend enrichment as demanded by the UN Security Council, and its failure to adopt an IAEA protocol permitting inspections beyond declared nuclear sites.

Monday’s developments come just a week after Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said his country was ready for fresh talks with world powers over its nuclear programme.

Jalili had said Iran had revised its proposal to the West and hoped “a new round of talks will be held for reaching a world full of progress and justice”.

Ahmadinejad’s latest comments and Elbaradei’s report provide fodder for Western powers trying to persuade Russia and China to back tougher sanctions against Iran.

Sanctions threat

Western nations, which suspect Iran is seeking to produce nuclear weapons, had given Tehran until the UN General Assembly meeting which goes from September 23-25, to take up an offer of talks on trade benefits if it stops uranium enrichment, or face harsher sanctions.

But Ahmadinejad said on Monday that “co-operation based on respect and justice is contradictory to setting a deadline”.

Instead, he invited officials from the so-called six powers – the US, Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany – to take a look at Iran’s forthcoming package of proposals addressing the “main challenges facing humanity”.

Iran is ready to negotiate and co-operate on making “peaceful use of clean nuclear energy” available for all countries and in preventing the spread of nuclear arms, he said. The semi-official ISNA news agency said Iran was likely to unveil the package by the end of this week.

Iran, which has always maintained that it seeks nuclear technology only to make electricity, has often said nuclear arms have no place in its defence doctrine and has called on the US and other countries with such weapons to dismantle them.

The UN Security Council has already imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran since 2006, targeting Iranian companies and individuals linked to the nuclear programme.

It may next impose sanctions against petrol imports into Iran, which although the world’s fifth biggest oil exporter, imports up to 40 per cent of its petrol.

In an apparent move to counter any such sanctions, Iranian media reported that Venezuela had pledged to export 20,000 barrels of petrol a day to Iran, in a deal struck during a visit by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, on Sunday. By Al Jazeera

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South Korean Rocket Takes Off, Satellite Launch Fails

August 31, 2009 By

sokor rocket takes off_South Korea’s first rocket launch Tuesday failed to push a satellite into its orbit but the flawed mission may still anger rival North Korea, coming just months after the communist nation’s own launch drew international condemnation.

The failure dealt a blow to Seoul’s quest to become a regional space power. It comes against the complex backdrop of relations on the Korean peninsula – and recent signs that months of heightened tension over the North’s nuclear program may be easing.

Also Tuesday, a South Korean newspaper reported that North Korea has invited top envoys of President Barack Obama for the first nuclear negotiations between the two countries under his presidency, but Washington quickly said it has no plans to send the envoys to Pyongyang.

The North gave no immediate reaction to the rocket launch but has said it will watch to see if the U.S. and regional powers refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council. A launch by North Korea in April was suspected to be a disguised test of long-range missile technology and drew a U.N. rebuke.

The North regarded the reaction as discriminatory, saying it fired a satellite into space, although experts say no such satellite has been detected. The North, unlike the South, is banned from any ballistic activity by Security Council resolutions as part of efforts to eliminate its nuclear and long-range missile programs.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly spoke in support of South Korea, saying it has pledged to develop rockets for peaceful purposes only, and that there was no indication the launch was “in any way inconsistent with its international obligations and international commitments.”

The launch Tuesday was South Korea’s first involving a rocket from its own territory. It was a two-stage Naro rocket whose first stage was designed by Russia. It lifted off from South Korea’s space center on Oenaro Island, about 290 miles (465 kilometers) south of Seoul.

The rocket was carrying a domestically built satellite aimed at observing the atmosphere and oceans. A South Korean official said they could not trace the satellite in orbit after it separated from the rocket.

“We could not locate our satellite. It seems that communications with the satellite scheduled on Wednesday are unlikely to happen,” Science Ministry official Yum Ki-soo told The Associated Press late Tuesday.

He said South Korean and Russian scientists were analyzing data to try to determine the cause of the failure.

Russia’s Interfax-AVN news agency, citing an unidentified Russian space industry source, said the satellite never reached orbit and problems occurred in the South Korean-built second stage of the rocket.

In Moscow, an official at the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, declined to comment on the fate of the satellite. In joint statements, Roscosmos and the state-controlled Khrunichev company, which made the rocket’s first stage, said that the first stage of the rocket operated as planned.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called the launch a “half success.”

“We must further strive to realize the dream of becoming a space power,” Lee said, according to his office. Among Asian countries, China has conducted a manned space flight, and Japan and India have also sent rockets carrying satellites into space.

North Korea said it would be “watching closely” for the international response to Seoul’s launch after its own launch drew what it maintains was unfair international condemnation.

South Korean officials said it is inappropriate to compare their launch with the North’s because Seoul’s is for peaceful purposes, in accordance with its membership in international treaties, and was carried out with transparency. “We’ve been doing this openly,” Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae told reporters.

Kim Tae-woo, a senior analyst of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said that despite the North’s stance, Tuesday’s launch is unlikely to have major implications on inter-Korean relations.

In recent weeks, the North has become markedly more conciliatory toward both the United States and South Korea. Earlier this month, it freed two American journalists following a trip to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton. It has also freed a South Korean detainee, agreed to lift restrictions on border crossings with the South and resume suspended inter-Korean projects in industry and tourism.

Pyongyang also reportedly invited U.S. envoys for talks on its nuclear program. The invitation was extended to Stephen Bosworth, special envoy to North Korea, and nuclear negotiator Sung Kim, Seoul’s JoongAng Ilbo daily reported.

But in Washington, spokesman Kelly said Tuesday that neither Bosworth nor Sung Kim has plans to go to North Korea. He would not say explicitly whether any North Korean invitation was received.

Pyongyang has long sought direct negotiations with Washington about its nuclear program and other issues. The U.S. says it is willing to talk bilaterally to Pyongyang, but only within the framework of six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, which North Korea withdrew from in April. By KWANG-TAE KIM Associated Press Writer

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Georgia War Changed Map For Good

August 25, 2009 By

georgia war changed map for goodA year after Russia defeated neighbor Georgia’s military bid to retake a pro-Moscow region from rebels, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday the war had redrawn the map of the Caucasus for good.

At a ceremony to decorate officers and soldiers who took part in the five-day conflict, Medvedev said the 58th army had prevented the extermination of South Ossetians, who broke from Georgian rule in the early 1990s.

Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a breakaway Georgian region on the Black Sea, as independent states after the conflict and has guaranteed their security.

“Last year’s events have finally redrawn the political map of the Caucasus,” Medvedev told the 58th Army, which spearheaded Russia’s riposte, in the North Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz.

“The recognition of South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence was the only possible solution,” he said. “This decision will not be reviewed.”

Medvedev later told a delegation of South Ossetians that recognizing their region as an independent state had been a tough — but correct — decision.

“The recognition was a difficult step. Until now there are illusion among some of our international partners that this was a temporary decision, that Russia is maneuvering, that it can be forced into giving up recognition,” he said.

“There will be no rowing back, we will move only forward.”

The war killed at least 390 civilians and at its height displaced more than 100,000. An unfulfilled ceasefire pact, sporadic gunfire and the withdrawal of monitors from pro-Western Georgia’s two rebel regions keep alive the risk of renewed war.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says Russia fueled separatism and invaded before Tbilisi acted, a charge Moscow has dismissed. Georgia says the invasion was long planned by its old Soviet master as punishment for Georgia’s pro-Western politics and bid to join NATO.

CANDLE-LIT CEREMONY

The brief war rattled Western confidence in oil and gas routes running through Georgia and skirting South Ossetia.

Western states condemned Russia’s counter-strike as “disproportionate” and the European Union and NATO froze talks with Russia, a major supplier of energy to Europe.

A year later, ties are back on and Medvedev said the conflict had not damaged Russia’s international relations.

Ossetians marked the anniversary with a candle-lit memorial in the main town Tskhinvali late on Friday timed to begin at the hour the Georgian assault began.

“Georgia’s military potential today is now much higher than it was before August 2008,” South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity said after opening a “genocide museum” into the conflict that was built amid the ruins of a house destroyed in the war.

“But our situation is much different today. Today, at our request, Russian military bases are here. They are a reliable guarantee of peace and stability,” he said.

Russia has around 2,000 troops stationed in South Ossetia and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told reporters said Georgia should have learnt a lesson about the dangers of using force.

“With the current Georgian leadership nothing can be ruled out. But it will be much more difficult for them to do it,” Putin said in a pooled report from the Black Sea city of Sochi, just a few dozen kilometres from the border with Georgia. By Oleg Shchedrov

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Afghanistan Bombing Kills 10

August 14, 2009 By

afghanistan bombing kills 10_A remote-controlled bomb exploded Monday in western Afghanistan’s main city, killing 10 people and critically wounding a district police chief – the main target of the attack. The bomb went off on a crowded street near a fruit market in Herat. It injured 30 people, said Raouf Ahmedi, the top police spokesman in western Afghanistan. The target was Mohammad Issa, the police chief for nearby Injil district, who was driving into town. He was transferred to a NATO-run hospital in critical condition, Ahmedi said.
Local police officials initially reported 12 dead. But the head of the regional health department, Dr. Ghulam Said Rashid, confirmed 10 were killed: a woman, a young girl, six men and two police officers. Ahmedi said the blast blew out windows in a 100-yard (meter) radius and several casualties were fruit vendors. Witnesses said the bomb left a one-yard wide crater in the street and damaged two police vehicles. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, said the group targeted the police chief.
The Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said insurgents attacked a police checkpoint in the old city of Baghlan to the north of the country on Sunday. Eight militants and two police died in the ensuing gun battle, the ministry said in a statement Monday. The violence in the comparatively calm cities of Herat and Baghlan highlighted the volatile situation across the country as Afghanistan braces for presidential and local elections later this month.
President Hamid Karzai, considered the front-runner, condemned Monday’s bombing and urged police to track down its perpetrators. “This is another attempt by the terrorists to disrupt democracy and development in Afghanistan,” Karzai said in a statement issued by his office. Some 101,000 NATO and U.S. forces are deployed to secure the country. This includes a record 62,000 U.S. troops, more than double the number a year ago but still half their strength in Iraq.
Nine troops have been killed in fighting or bombings this month in Afghanistan, including three Americans on Sunday and three on Saturday, along with two Canadians and one French. July was the deadliest month for international troops since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban government for sheltering al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, with 74 foreign troops – including 43 Americans – killed.
Roadside bombs have become the militants’ weapon of choice in Afghanistan, and the number of such attacks has spiked this year. U.S. troops say militants are now using bombs with little or no metal, making them even harder to detect. The Taliban are also planting multiple bombs on top of one another and burying several bombs in one small area. U.S. commanders have long predicted a rise in violence in Afghanistan this summer, the country’s traditional fighting season, and Taliban militants have vowed to disrupt the country’s Aug. 20 presidential vote.

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