Asia Focus

In this days India's parliament has begun debate ahead of a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government. The vote is due on Tuesday and according to experts the outcome is too close to call. The Indian government will collapse and early elections will be called if Prime Minister Singh's government loses the vote. Prime Minister Singh stirred up anger among his left-wing and communist allies by pushing ahead a nuclear accord with the United States, which his government insists is essential to meet the energy needs of India's fast-growing economy.

Last Thursday the Chinese Labor Ministry confirm will transfer more than $9.1 billion in company pension plans to selected fund managers by the end of this year. China's market for enterprise annuities, as the plans are known, is expected to grow by 30 billion to 50 billion yuan, or $3.9 billion to $6.5 billion, in 2007.

According with labor authorities China's company pensions market was valued at about 90 billion yuan at the end of last year, of which 20 billion yuan has already been transferred to fund managers. All company pension plans rolled out in the future will be handled by fund professionals.

China allows 37 firms to handle these funds. Of these, four are joint-venture fund houses, according to a KPMG-Reuters research report. These include Harvest Fund Management, 19.5 percent owned by Deutsche Bank, and China Merchants Fund Management, in which ING holds 30 percent. The government will also gradually expand the scope for insurers to invest directly in stocks, confirm the responsible of the insurance regulator, China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

China is allowing pension funds and insurers greater access to stocks to help boost returns as it dismantles the nation's cradle-to-grave welfare system. The benchmark CSI 300 Index gained 121 percent last year.

Preparations are under way to lift a ceiling that limits insurers' direct investment in the stock market to 5 percent of assets, and progress will be made according to the needs of insurance firms. China also bans investments by insurance firms in stocks that have more than doubled in the previous 12 months. There are no current plans to remove this restriction.

Written: by LuisB

About 1.24 million Chinese college graduates have failed to land jobs that require their qualifications upon graduation this year, the county's top labour official said.

A total of 4.13 million students graduated from higher education institutions this year, 750,000 more than last year, as the country enters its ninth year of expanding college enrolment.

Tian Chengping, minister of labour and social security, said on Thursday (Nov 23) he estimates about 70 per cent of college graduates have been employed since graduation, according to the China Youth Daily.

He said the central government has set up an inter-ministerial joint team, including the Ministry of Education, to help address employment problems.

Meanwhile, the Labour and Social Security Ministry has established a mechanism to provide guidance and training for unemployed graduates, the minister said.

Only 22 per cent of China's new jobs last year were for college graduates, estimates a ministry study of 114 urban labour markets.

Tian said the country should create more jobs in the process of economic development and urged college graduates to work in grassroots units and undeveloped areas where they are most needed.

China's official registered unemployment rate stood at 4.1 per cent in the first nine months of 2006.

The demand for college graduates was down 22 per cent in 24 provinces and 15 major cities from last year, said a report issued by the Ministry of Personnel in March.

A survey showed 52.14 per cent of bachelor degree holders considered lack of experience as the biggest obstacle in finding work.

Colleges and universities should organize internships to prepare students for employment, said Lin Zeyan, a researcher with the Development Research Centre of the State Council at a forum this month.

The country needs to develop its service sector and promote small and medium-sized enterprises to create more jobs, said Mo Rong, deputy chief of the Labour Science Research Institute.

Aboard the Kurama - Nearly 50 warships crowded the bay just south of Tokyo, all flying the Rising Sun flag. Sea-to-sea missiles roared off the decks of several destroyers, and submarines emerged like a pod of whales from the surf.

More than an exercise, this was a message: In Asia's accelerating arms race, Japan is determined not to fall behind.

“The security environment surrounding our nation has changed dramatically in recent years,'' Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the sailors aboard this destroyer after watching Japan's annual fleet review Sunday. “I believe this is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate our readiness”.

Though in the planning for months, the fleet review - Japan's biggest show of its military might each year - came just weeks after North Korea sent shock waves through the region with the Oct. 9 announcement that it had conducted its first nuclear test.

The test brought particularly strong condemnation from Japan, which is within striking distance of North Korea's ballistic missiles. Japan plays host to about 50,000 U.S. soldiers, who would probably also be high on the list of potential targets should North Korea decide to launch an air attack.

But well before North Korea's nuclear announcement, Japan, the United States and Asia's other big power, China, have been scrambling to enhance their military standing in a region rife with territorial disputes, economic tensions and the remnants of Cold War rivalries.

“For Japan, the radical shift has already happened in many ways,'' said Lance Gatling, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who is now a private analyst.

Gatling cited North Korea's launch of a long-range ballistic missile over Japan's main island in August 1998 as the key event. Tokyo responded by launching its own intelligence-gathering satellites and agreeing to join in the creation of a U.S.- led ballistic missile shield - a move it had previously considered too provocative.

Japan, which Gatling said has just 7 to 12 minutes to respond to a North Korean missile attack, will soon be bristling with Patriot interceptors. A U.S. Army detachment is being deployed on the southern island of Okinawa, and reports this week said Japan is also considering putting more missiles around Tokyo, where roughly one-quarter of all Japanese live.

Abe and other senior members of Japan's ruling party, meanwhile, firmly support an overhaul of the country's post-World War II constitution, which bans the use of military force as a means of settling international disputes. Over the next several months, the nation's Defense Agency is expected to be revamped into a full-fledged ministry.

But officials also say the need for a stronger military is not a knee-jerk reaction to North Korea, and instead reflects deeper problems specific to the region.

“With the creation of the European Union, it is now hard to imagine a nation-on-nation war in Europe,'' Japan's new defense chief, Fumio Kyuma, said last week.

“But in East Asia, we still have this possibility”.

Kyuma also noted that with the addition of North Korea, Asia is now the best-represented region in the world's nine-country nuclear club - with India, Pakistan and China having already demonstrated their capabilities.

Still, Kyuma has come out strongly against the nuclear option, as has Abe.

“I am from Nagasaki”, Kyuma said earlier this month. “I hope Nagasaki will be the last place on Earth ever to suffer a nuclear attack”.

Written: by Eric Talmadge

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Publish: by LuisB

Inside Myanmar's secret capital

One year after Myanmar's secretive ruling military junta suddenly relocated the national capital 320 kilometers north from Yangon to Naypyidaw, the motivations behind the dramatic move are still unclear.

Foreign access to the new capital is strictly forbidden. But this correspondent's recent travels through the area showed that the junta has quietly continued to build around the new capital's greenfield site, which is rapidly swallowing the old town formerly known as Pyinmana. And recent construction of key infrastructure in other parts of the country's heartland Mandalay division offers new clues to the junta's grand designs for the region.

Although on a smaller scale than in the new capital, Myanmar's government is concurrently developing military, communications and transport infrastructure in a corridor that runs directly north from Naypyidaw to Pyin Oo Lwin, the town where the army's Defense Services Academy (DSA) training facility is situated.

The regime is building a new military airport just outside of Pyin Oo Lwin in nearby Anikasan town. The single runway, a 3,000-meter-long airstrip, took nearly two years to complete and immediately came into service last October when the junta received India's army chief of staff J J Singh in Pyin Oo Lwin. The Indian official was subsequently taken on a tour of the DSA as well as the Defense Services Technological Academy.

Residents of Pyin Oo Lwin and nearby Mandalay say the new airstrip is more commonly used to ferry high-ranking military officials between Naypyidaw and a newly built luxury housing complex between Anikasan Airport and Pyin Oo Lwin, which reportedly includes a large mansion belonging to State Peace and Development Council chief General Than Shwe. Strictly off limits to visitors, the site was built with the help of Htoo Trading, owned by Tay Za, the military's preferred construction contractor and a renowned arms dealer.

In July, just outside of Pyin Oo Lwin, the junta began construction on the Yadanabon Silicon Village, a new cyber-city that promises to serve as an integral part of the new capital's communication network. Although construction has just commenced, architectural blueprints seen by this correspondent at the site's foreman's cabin show plans for a sprawling complex devoted to software incubation and information-technology hardware suites, along with a modern residential zone.

In August, builders had cleared a channel for a new access road to the site, though construction of the complex itself has not progressed beyond initial landscaping. Builders could be heard by this correspondent blasting the hillside as part of the land-clearing process. As with the new capital Naypyidaw, photographing the site is strictly forbidden.

Military industrial complex

The junta apparently has an eye on concentrating key industry around the region. Old and new military installations line the main road from Pyin Oo Lwin to Mandalay, including the Defense Services Mechanical and Electrical Engineering School, which was built more than a decade ago. The town is also home to the Defense Services Institute of Technology, the Defense Services Administration School and the Army Training Depot.

Also just outside Pyin Oo Lwin is Myanmar's only iron-and-steel factory, which produces about 30,000 tons of metal a year, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua. In a bid to improve access to this increasingly significant military town, the government in 2003 decided to upgrade drastically the notoriously poor Mandalay-Pyin Oo Lwin road with the help of the Asia World Co, another preferred contractor owned by Steven Law, who has widely alleged links to the narcotics trade. It now takes less than an hour by car to reach Mandalay from Pyin Oo Lwin.

Almost equidistant between Pyin Oo Lwin and Naypyidaw is the strategically significant town of Meiktila, home to the country's air force. Meiktila has also seen extensive development in recent years coincident with construction of the new capital. Since 2001, there have been reports that China and Russia have helped upgrade the Shante air base, the country's main military airstrip, a few kilometers northeast of Meiktila.

Reports that both countries have recently sold and delivered fighter jets to the base seem to be confirmed by satellite images downloaded using Google Earth, which clearly show a number of olive-green Chinese Chengdu F-7M Airguard and light-khaki NAMC A-5C military aircraft along with blue Russian MiG-29s - all recent additions to Myanmar's air force. At the nearby Meiktila Airfield, Google Earth images also show a number of what appear to be Russian Mi-17 helicopters.

In addition to supplying military hardware, media reports have suggested, Chinese and Russian aeronautical experts have in recent years made regular visits to the various air force training schools around Meiktila.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper in April 2004 confirmed that lectures were administered by "local and foreign experts" at the Myanmar Aerospace Engineering University in Meiktila, which at the time was still in the process of being completed. This "new and separate university", the report said, would "make the teaching programs more effective by sending teachers going to work at the university to foreign countries for further studies and inviting foreign technicians to the university to give lectures".

Highlighting the military significance of the new facility, Than Shwe said during a 2004 visit, "Only when the university produces future technicians in aerospace and engineering fields for the state will the nation be able to keep pace with others." The military has also relied on Chinese and Russian assistance to help build other significant military installations in and around Meiktila.

In April 2004, around the time construction on the new capital began, the junta signed a US$500 million deal with Ukrainian state arms company UkrspetsExport to build an APC (armored personnel carrier) factory. Between 12km and 15km outside of Meiktila, according to a former employee of the Ukrainian firm who worked on the deal, the facility is designed over a 10-year period to receive about 1,000 70%-assembled BTR-3U APCs.

At the factory, Meiktila-based Ukrainian technicians are geared to work hand-in-hand with their Myanmar counterparts to complete the assembly process and pass along knowledge about the vehicles' inner workings, the company's former employee said. Although the deal was designed to run until 2014, Myanmar's failure to meet payments on time has recently soured relations between the two sides.

In a bid to receive past-due payments, Sergiy Korostil, UkrspetsExport's chief representative in Yangon, wrote a letter to Myanmar's Ministry of Defense this year. This was, however, rebuffed when the Myanmar side accused the Ukrainians of violating their side of the agreement when their technicians were discovered to have left their designated military compound without authorization. Whether this tit-for-tat exchange has killed the deal is unclear. Korostil is reportedly still operating out of his office at the Nikko Hotel in Yangon with a small team of staff, and the executive has since made visits to Naypyidaw to meet with government officials.

The hiccup with UkrspetsExport has not dampened other foreign firms' appetite to ink deals with the junta. Many Asian companies have traveled to Naypyidaw to sign a host of state contracts to build communication, transport and perhaps even military infrastructure. In 1998, prior to the UkrspetsExports episode, Myanmar agreed to a deal with China to build a landmine factory just outside of Meiktila, which is reportedly still up and running.

The junta has also made efforts to significantly upgrade transport links to Meiktila. In August, workers could be seen opposite the town's train platform working on the beginnings of a construction project between the two main lines that run through Meiktila railway station. On July 16, the government held a ceremony to launch the new Naypyidaw-Meiktila express-train service, one of a number of recently added routes to the new capital. The project included construction of "13 small and big bridges ... along the railroad", the state-run press reported.

South of Meiktila, the road to Naypyidaw has undergone considerable renovation, at least by Myanmar's poor standards. Although many roads in the new capital remain unfinished, an expansive new highway that leads off the main Yangon-Mandalay road to the new Ministry of Defense compound is nearly complete.

A Western observer who in recent months caught a rare glimpse inside the new 35-square-kilometer defense zone to the north of the new capital noticed giant statues of past Burmese kings along the main parade ground. "Most notable was the four-lane concrete road that passes through the entire complex, [which] becomes six then eight lanes as you enter the military side. Reportedly, this is so it can serve as an airplane runway," said the Western observer, who requested anonymity.

Mysterious motivations

While commentators have offered a host of reasons for the junta's sudden move north, ranging from astrology to military strategy to fears of a possible US-led invasion, the larger field of development in Myanmar's central heartland lends credence to the simpler strategic notion that the junta regards the central heartland as an ideal site to consolidate its resources.

Whether or not the move to Naypyidaw offers strategic military advantages is debatable, according to Andrew Selth, an expert on Myanmar's armed forces. "Building Naypyidaw emphasizes and utilizes that corridor, but there have long been plans to upgrade these facilities, as they are also important for economic and political reasons," he said. "In purely strategic terms, it would have been more sensible to diversify these critical north-south links and build more routes on the western side of the Irrawaddy [River], or in the east of the country."

Selth said the increasing separation of Myanmar's ruling military generals from the civilian population would make it far easier for a potential foreign invader to target the junta through air strikes. Nevertheless, the argument previously put forward that the switch inland from the old coastal capital Yangon reduces the risk to the junta of a land invasion was probably taken into account by the military.

In the past, the junta felt most threatened through its vulnerability at the Bay of Bengal. In 1988, the US moved navy vessels into the area, apparently in the event of the state collapsing during the democratic uprisings. In 1992, junta abuses against Muslims in Arakan state prompted the wrath of Saudi Arabia, whose army chief Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz called on the United Nations to intervene and help the minority Muslims.

Selth reasons that relocating inland does not put the military out of reach of advanced missiles and aircraft of its perceived primary threat - the United States. President George W Bush's administration has recently referred to Myanmar as an "outpost of tyranny", though few security experts reckon the US would ever attack, because of China's heavy influence in Myanmar. But "if the external threat was seen as real and imminent, the regime may well choose to consolidate its military strength in central [Myanmar], with a view to a conventional defense of the [Myanmar] heartland," he said.

Whether efforts to expand resources and facilities in the country's central heartland truly shore up national defenses given that the main insurgency threat lies in the surrounding areas controlled by Karen insurgents is debatable, Selth said. "Given its make-up, it is difficult to see the current government doing anything that does not include some consideration of military and strategic factors," he said.

While evidence of massive construction activity in Mandalay division suggests that the junta may well see central Myanmar as the key to its ultimate survival, as ever, only Than Shwe and his inner circle know the real reason behind their dramatic and expensive shift to Naypyidaw.

Written: by Clive Parker, is a reporter at The Irrawaddy, an online news service and monthly magazine that focuses on Myanmar and Southeast Asia, based in Chiang Mai. He is possibly the first foreign journalist to report from Myanmar's new capital.

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East Timor on the precipite

After centuries of Portuguese colonialism and more than two decades of Indonesian military occupation, instability and violence continue to plague East Timor, simultaneously one of the world's newest and poorest nations.

Since East Timor won independence in May 2002, grave uncertainty has marked the future of the small, resource-rich island nation. Violent clashes that started this April and peaked in June are now kicking up again, indicating that the island's long  struggle for freedom has now morphed into a violent fight for power among competitive armed groups.

Last week rival groups of marauding youths primitively fought one another with knives, machetes and bows and arrows, set fire to houses and, significantly, attacked the 1,600-strong foreign peacekeeping contingent, which landed in May and is made up mainly of Australian troops, with smaller contingents of Malaysians, New Zealanders and Portuguese. At least four people have died in the latest surge in violence.

That augurs ill for those who hoped foreign intervention and the July 8 appointment of former Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta would quell the violence and help to reconcile competitive groups inside the police and military. Rather, the recent disturbances have been interpreted by Brigadier-General Taur Matan Ruak, the current commander-in-chief of the armed forces, as an attempt to overthrow the new government.

He says the main objectives of the violent gangs are "the collapse of the executive branch, the dissolution of parliament, and the establishment of a government of national unity". Matan Ruak, a Ramos-Horta loyalist, was a legendary guerrilla leader who fought against the occupying Indonesians for 25 years.

Rioters have recently targeted international peacekeepers, notably after Australian troops shot tear gas last week into an improvised refugee camp, which injured a child near the airport in Dili, the capital. Australian troops also reportedly opened fire that same day when a man approached them in a perceived threatening manner. The director of the Dili hospital, Antonio Calere, told Portuguese reporters that four people were killed and 47 injured last week. Two Portuguese soldiers and one Australian were among the injured.

The United Nations Office in East Timor (UNOTIL) has since called for the replacement of Australian troops with UN police officers, who would be led by Antero Lopes of Portugal and include soldiers from Portugal, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Acting Police Commissioner Lopes told the Portuguese press that the violence last Wednesday reached the worst level since June, when more than 20,000 Timorese fled the capital for the nearby hills.

Ramos-Horta said by telephone from Rome - where he was visiting the Vatican to invite Pope Benedict XVI to visit East Timor - that "different groups in Timor are trying to manipulate the foreign military forces, alternately accusing the Portuguese and the Australians".

"Members of a group that was neutralized by the Australians accuse them of supporting the other side, and members of a group neutralized by the Portuguese accuse the Portuguese of favoring the other side. It's a never-ending story," said Ramos-Horta, who concurrently serves as the country's defense chief.

"The Australian, New Zealand, Malaysian and Portuguese forces went to East Timor at the request of the presidency, parliament and the government. In general, the troops have behaved in an exemplary manner. Incidents have occurred, but they have never been deliberate," he said.

That's not necessarily how the UN Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste, which was established to investigate the causes and culprits of the recent violence that led to at least 40 deaths and triggered the ongoing crisis, views the situation. Released last month, the UN inquiry recommended that some 90 high-ranking Timorese officials and others be investigated and, if the evidence warranted, prosecuted in local courts. One top official named by the UN commission: army commander-in-chief Matan Ruak.

Ramos-Horta said in the interview that the armed forces and Matan Ruak had already "presented public apologies" after the UN special commission issued the results of its investigation. "It is very rare for a military force anywhere in the world to show such integrity, courage and humility, an attitude that will help cure many wounds in our society," he stated.

In late June, East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao asked for the resignation of prime minister Mari Alkatiri and defense minister Roque Rodrigues, and named then-foreign minister Ramos-Horta to both posts. The reason given for the move was alleged discrimination against the Loromunus ethnic group from the western part of the island by the Lorosae from the east, who significantly have much greater representation in the armed forces and police.

But analysts in Portugal and Australia say the problem is not so much ethnic as economic. They point in particular to the competitive interest for political control over the country's vast oil and natural-gas reserves. Once brought online, those reserves are expected to lift significantly the country's gross domestic product per capita of about US$400 and help solve the country's endemic unemployment.

"We do not have a middle class in the real sense of the word, nor any significant private sector, and I say that because no country develops without a private sector and a middle class," Ramos-Horta said. "As everyone knows, this takes many years to develop. Sometimes people forget that we are only in our fourth year of independence."

For his part, Matan Ruak has said a parliamentary investigation commission should be set up "to guarantee a rapid return to peace". The aim of the commission would be "to determine the objectives and strategies" of the violent groups "and identify the moral and intellectual authors behind the crisis - and, above all, to hold them accountable".

Ramos-Horta said it was "only natural" that the UN would call for further investigations. "It is the responsibility of the attorney general to determine whether or not that is necessary," he said, adding: "For my part, I continue to have full confidence in Brigadier-General Taur Matan Ruak."

Unfortunately, not everyone else that matters is in agreement. Major Alfredo Reinado, who deserted the armed forces with a group of his military followers in June, is still holed up in the jungle. Ousted prime minister Alkatiri is still disgruntled and politically powerful. And the prognosis from the streets is for more violence in the weeks ahead.

Written: by Mario de Queiroz

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Hong Kong's low-cost airline with all the frills

The first low-cost carrier to fly between Hong Kong and London took off yesterday, a day late, offering the usual trimmings such as food and films at a fraction of the normal price.

Oasis Airlines' inaugural flight was due to land at Gatwick, carrying its chief executive, Stephen Miller, financier Reverend Raymond Lee and about 300 passengers. The original departure, set for Wednesday, had to be postponed after the flight plan was rejected by Russian aviation authorities.

The cost of economy seats started at HK$1,000 (£75) before tax. Business class seats were HK$6,600 before tax. Most industry analysts are supportive, even though the idea of providing no-frills prices, with frills, seems hard to sustain. Four flights between Hong Kong and London are planned for the first month, with daily flights from November 25. Oasis says it has pared down costs by extracting more flying hours out of each plane, planning a cargo service and using subsidiary airports.

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India's Sensex breaks 13,000 mark

India's main stock index, the Sensex, has broken the 13,000 milestone and reached its best-ever finish on Monday. At close in Mumbai the 30-share index reached 13,024.26 - a gain of 117.45 points, or 0.91%, on last week's close. Shares were boosted by solid earnings from several key banks and technology firms, but analysts said investors may now take profits.

The index has now risen 36% in 2006, and has shrugged off a sharp slide in June to below 9,000.

Beyond expectations, corporate earnings growth has been beyond expectations. The Sensex, which reached a previous best of 12,994 points on 17 October, was boosted on Monday by aggressive buying by funds of stock in Infosys Technologies. The record level comes ahead of a Reserve Bank of India review of interest rates. The bank is expected to keep a key short-term rate unchanged.

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Written: by LuisB

North Korea's nuclear test Oct. 9 may have created a crisis atmosphere in the world but, at the same time, it has greatly improved China's relations with the United States as the two countries work closely together to put pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear-arms program.

This new situation is recognized by both Washington and Beijing. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on a swing through Japan, South Korea, China and Russia - which along with the U.S. and North Korea make up the countries taking part in the "six-party talks" - that some developments suggest that Beijing was becoming more of a partner on issues important to Washington. 

Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia responsible for the North Korea talks, said at a forum in Washington that the two countries have "really come closer together as a result of this terrible provocation by the North Koreans."

"So perhaps someday in the history books, Kim Jong Il will get a lot of credit for bringing the U.S. and China closer together," he added facetiously.

Both Rice and Hill have underlined the significance of China actually joining the other 14 members of the United Nations Security Council to denounce North Korea, its erstwhile ally.

"Not bad for a couple of years' work," Rice said, apparently referring to the time Washington and Beijing had spent working together on the North Korean nuclear issue.

China, too, recognizes its increased importance to the U.S. When President Hu Jintao received Rice last Friday, he said her visit showed "that U.S. President George (W.) Bush and the U.S. government attach great importance to U.S.- China relations."

Actually, the North Korean nuclear issue has provided a geostrategic rationale for the Chinese-American relationship for the last few years, ever since Beijing became both mediator and host in the international talks to get Pyongyang to end its nuclear-weapons program. Such a rationale had been largely missing since the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

China and North Korea were allies during the Korean War in the 1950s against the Union States and South Korea. The two are still technically allies, since a treaty of friendship signed in 1961 obligates each to go to the assistance of the other if one of them should come under military attack from a third country.

Now, though, the rift between the two is palpable, with Beijing joining the U.S. and the other members of the U.N. Security Council twice in three months in voting for a resolution denouncing North Korea.

While the North Korean media has not criticized China by name, some recent articles clearly were directed at Beijing. Reserving most of its venom for the U.S., Pyongyang has denounced all the other members of the Security Council - including China - for supporting the resolution.

According to a North Korean spokesman, the resolution "cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of war" against Pyongyang and was intended to "destroy the socialist system" in the country. Such a charge would be especially hurtful to China, which still considers itself a socialist country.

In fact, the day after the resolution was adopted, the Korean Central News Agency publicized a signed article in the official newspaper Rodong Sinmun that called for the maintenance of "revolutionary principles."

To shrink back from revolutionary principles, it said, "means surrender and ruin" and would ultimately lead to "subordination and slavery."

"This has been proved by the situation of some countries," it said. "Those countries that were building socialism in the past deviated from the revolutionary principles with no faith in socialism when facing difficulties and ordeals. And they were afraid of the threat and blackmail by the imperialists and yielded to them."

These words seem a clear allusion to China, which after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong gave up class struggle and embraced capitalist principles, even though China insists it has not abandoned socialism and is merely employing the market economy as a tool. 

China's growing closeness to the U.S. is likely to lead to increased trust, which will help resolve other problems. If there was doubt in Washington before about China's attitude to a fellow Communist country, that has no doubt been laid to rest.

The rift with North Korea is not likely to heal in the near term. The days when China described its relationship with North Korea as being as close as that between lips and teeth are gone forever.

Source: The Japan Times

Written: by Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator.

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Publish: by LuisB

Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev is taking swift action to defuse popular outrage over a scandal, in which at least 78 children have been infected with the HIV virus through the negligence of healthcare workers.

On October 25, Nazarbayev traveled to Shymkent, the capital of the South Kazakhstan Region, and the scene of the mass infections, to be briefed on the crisis by local officials. The first reports of children becoming infected surfaced this spring, but the trend rapidly accelerated in recent weeks. As of mid-October, at least seven of the infected children had died from HIV-related illnesses, the Health Ministry reported. Eight mothers of HIV-positive children are also infected.

The scandal has shed light on corruption within Kazakhstan’s healthcare system. It also embarrasses Nazarbayev’s administration, which has gone to great lengths this year to tout Kazakhstan as a rapidly modernizing nation that could soon join the ranks of the world’s 50 largest economies.

The children contracted HIV via tainted blood transfusions. Among the sources of the tragedy, Health Minister Anatoly Dernovoi identified three factors: inadequate equipment, unqualified healthcare staff and misappropriation of funds, the Kazinform news agency reported October 25. Other officials have cited the embezzlement of state assets by healthcare workers as playing a major role in the infections.

Nazarbayev’s visit to Shymkent was designed to demonstrate his direct involvement in improving care conditions in the region. The president received an update on the HIV situation from the health minister and the regional prosecutor. He also vowed that all those responsible for the infections would be brought to justice, and indicated that additional funds would be allocated to correct existing problems. “The economic situation in the region is not bad,” the Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted Nazarbayev as saying. “The only thing that needs to be done is to put right the health situation.”

Criminal proceedings are already under way. Eight senior doctors and public health officials face charges of negligence, according to Torekhan Aday, who is leading the ongoing investigation. Aday identified the accused as the former regional health department director, two of her deputies, a former senior doctor at the regional children’s hospital along with his deputy and two department heads, and a former senior doctor at the regional blood center. Since those indictments, the investigation has broadened its scope; at least 12 more criminal investigations have been opened. Possible charges arising out of these probes could include bribery, Aday told Kazakhstan Today.

The scandal claimed the political careers of several top officials, with Nazarbayev installing a new health minister, Dernovoi, as well as a new regional governor for South Kazakhstan, Umirzak Shukeyev, the former mayor of the capital Astana. In struggling to contain the spread of HIV infections, authorities have screened roughly 10,000 children and 18,000 pregnant women for the disease.

“This catastrophe has arisen due to the fault of specific people,” Shukeyev told a task force set up to tackle the crisis on 26 September. “They must be punished. Society expects that from us; the parents of the victims expect that from us.”

Dernovoi was quick to point the finger at his predecessor, Yerbolat Dosayev, who was sacked on September 20. “Obvious medical mistakes have been made which led to the outbreak of HIV infection,” Dernovoi said in remarks broadcast on Channel 31. “In this lack of professionalism we see mistakes made by the previous management. The Health Ministry is going to push through all reforms and all measures directly aimed at improving the health service for the public.”

The specific origin of the infections has not yet been determined. However, mass media outlets have focused on corrupt practices in the health system. Reports have suggested that graft among hospital managers may have caused equipment shortages, leading to disposable syringes being re-used. The criminal investigation has likewise revealed irregularities in the donor system: blood given for free was re-sold; donors giving their blood for money were underpaid; and one woman remains under investigation for allegedly acting as an intermediary in blood sales.

Reports say that homeless people, prostitutes and drug addicts were routinely giving blood for money, sometimes using fictitious addresses and false IDs. Payments are relatively attractive, ranging from $16 for blood and $32 for plasma. If reports that medical staff pocketed some of that money are accurate, this would indicate both doctors and donors had a financial incentive in the transactions, thereby explaining the lax enforcement of safeguards in Shymkent.

In the wake of the infections, new, stringent standards have been introduced, a doctor at the National Blood Center in Almaty told EurasiaNet. “All laboratories are operating strictly according to the rules now,” the deputy head of the center’s medical unit, Aliya Mamyrkhanova, said. “Our documentation is all in order; we are strictly checking donors to avoid the transfer of infection. … We are aware of our responsibility for blood transfusion, in making sure infection is not passed on.”

To many Kazakhstani citizens, reports of corruption in state-run healthcare facilities do not come as a particular surprise. A payment or gift of some sort, often discretionary, is widely seen as needed to receive attentive care, even though medical services in state-run facilities are supposed to be free. Anecdotal evidence speaks of senior doctors setting targets for junior doctors to bring in a certain sum at the end of each shift.

The families of infected children are to receive financial assistance from the state, including a preliminary payment of approximately $800, and subsidies ranging from $110 to $175 per month while the children are being treated. The children are expected to qualify for a disability allowance of approximately $70 per month until the age of 16. Medical assistance has arrived from abroad. Two Russian experts are working on the ground, one offering psychological counseling to families and medical staff, another focusing on treatment for the infected children, UNICEF says. More foreign specialists are expected in late October.

The stigma of HIV/AIDS is a further source of trauma for the families, who face rejection by a public ignorant of HIV. Some families of infected children have gone public to report being shunned by acquaintances. UNICEF has launched a publicity campaign to encourage ethical reporting of the crisis and warn of the danger of stigmatizing the infected children. “One main problem is to avoid discrimination against children who are infected,” UNICEF communications assistant Torgyn Mukayeva told EurasiaNet. UNICEF conducted a seminar in Shymkent on October 13 to promote awareness that infected people can survive with the virus.

The government is moving to tackle problems in blood transfusion centers. Reports say centers all over Kazakhstan are being inspected. It remains to be seen whether this flurry of activity will translate into real reform of the health system, which is in clear need of an overhaul. As Shukeyev, the new governor of South Kazakhstan, told medical staff in late September: “We may be seeing just the tip of the iceberg.”

Note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specializes in Central Asian affairs.

Publish: by LuisB

Masha Iwatate is a Japanese restaurant consultant who is crazy about Korean style - and not, she says, because she has been married to a Korean for 10 years. No, it is because she loves natural beauty that defies convention. “I admire the nature-friendly concept that blurs the boundary between nature and home,” she says. “An example is the open main floor in traditional Korean houses".

She uses brass vessels as rice bowls and a traditional wooden box as a tea table, so she can’t understand why Koreans will not use old household items that are great in both design and function in their daily life - scooped wooden dishes, brass vessels and earthen pottery. In December, Tuttle Publishing of the U.S. will bring out her coffee-table book “Korean Style,”.

Korean traditional paper 

One proviso: don’t even think about decorating your home in Korean style if you have lots of stuff. If you want the style, throw some of it away. However nice your knickknacks are, they will hurt the eye unless they are in their proper position. If you think that the house looks barren with some items gone, just paper one wall of the living room with a Korean traditional design pattern to create a new mood. Iwatate uses Korean traditional paper or bamboo shades as blinds and curtains. “Instead of curtains, decorate a glass wall to a balcony or side door to a multipurpose room with Korean traditional paper,” she recommends. “All you have to do is to apply glass adhesive and paste the paper. When it gets dirty, you can just spray water on it to remove it.”

If you have a kimchi refrigerator on the veranda because the kitchen isn’t big enough, hang a bamboo blind on the window. “It not only improves the interior but also blocks the sunlight,” she says. She usually buys traditional decorating material at shops around the Cheonggye Stream and Dongdaemun Market.

Small traditional objects

Iwatate says small traditional objects make lovely decorations. She likes to make bamboo lamps by putting a light bulb in the long woven bamboo cylinder called jukbuin or a “bamboo wife,” and wrap it with Korean traditional paper of various colors. The lids of earthenware can be turned into fishbowls for tropical fish, which is suitable for decorating a balcony or and can serve as a natural humidifier. Old brass braziers are perfect for putting flowerpots on. Some ramie cushions on the sofa will enhance the traditional beauty. Traditional octagonal plates can be used as picture frames, and defective earthen pots as an umbrella stand.

The places Iwatate is most familiar with in Seoul are Janganpeyong and Dapsimni, where traditional furniture shops are clustered. There, she can not only buy old traditional furniture 20-30 percent cheaper but also find old materials easily. She is using a wooden rice chest and a cedar chest she bought there as a dressing table and a tea table. She sometimes buys an assortment of earthenware as containers for spices, tea and rice. Stone cookers are a recent hot item. They make the dining table look nice when set with silver spoons and chopsticks.

Source: Digital Ilbo Shosun

Written: by LuisB

Today, on the threshold of 60 momentous years of Independence, the nation is justifiably proud of its myriad achievements. Among these is the remarkable success in eliminating widespread famines and the impressive increases in food production. Nonetheless, there is a long road to be travelled before the vision of a truly food secure India is achieved.

As the world's leading humanitarian agency and the food aid arm of the United Nations, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been privileged to work with the Government of India in its efforts to eliminate hunger and ensure food security to the poor. Although its assistance is small compared to the scale of the Government's own programmes, yet with its international outreach, and the experience gained globally, the WFP has a special niche in complementing and sharpening government efforts to eliminate hunger.

Recent years have seen the economy booming and growth rates have been among the highest in the world. The flip side, however, is that one in every five Indians suffers from overt or covert hunger.

"Hunger," as stated by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, is "intolerable in the modern world" in a way it could not have been in the past, because it is "so unnecessary and unwarranted.

" India is a poignant example of how food sufficiency at the aggregate level has not translated into food security at the household level. A staggeringly large number of undernourished - about 214 million people - is chronically food insecure. Many more, varyingly about 40 million, are exposed to natural disasters. About 50 per cent of children (mostly tribal and rural) are undernourished and stunted, 23 per cent have a low birth weight and 68 out of 1000 die before the age of one year. There is a high prevalence of anaemia and other micronutrient deficiencies.

The challenge before the WFP is to help the country attain the critical Millennium Development Goal on eradicating hunger. The Draft Approach Paper to the Planning Commission's Eleventh Five-Year Plan articulates a "vision of growth that will be much more broad-based and inclusive.” These priorities of the Government match the WFP's own goals and will guide future initiatives. As part of the U.N. system, the WFP also works within the U.N. Development Assistance Framework to achieve synergy and, at the same time, avoid costly duplication of efforts.

Committed to the vision of a hunger-free India, the WFP set itself twin goals. The first is to be a catalyst for change in the country's effort to reduce vulnerability and eliminate food insecurity. The second is to leverage policy and resources to demonstrate models that provide immediate and longer-term food security in the most food insecure areas.

The WFP seeks to achieve its strategic objectives through three major initiatives. The first is the support it extends to the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). India is home to the largest number of children in the world. But what distinguishes India is not the numbers but what has been called its "silent emergency": astonishingly high child malnutrition rates. As part of its assistance to the ICDS, the WFP has successfully piloted Indiamix - a nutritious fortified food - widely recognised as an innovative nutrition intervention.

Secondly, the WFP complements the Government of India's mid-day meal scheme in some districts with a mid-morning snack that is fortified with vitamins and minerals and enhances learning by children, many of whom go to school on an empty stomach. This has proved to be an effective means to increase enrolment and retention, especially that of young girls.

With increasing degradation of resources, the livelihoods of poor tribal communities are under threat. In collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the WFP assists food-for-work activities in tribal development programmes undertaken by Governments in select States. This has led to empowerment of tribal communities and sustainable use of natural resources.
In addition to the core programmes, the WFP has proposed significant capacity-building initiatives that relate to food fortification, grain banks, and strengthening of the Government's food-based programmes. The Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative is an alliance between UNICEF and the WFP at the global level as well as in India that holds great promise.

The WFP takes pride in the analytical rigour it has imparted to the conceptualisation of food security. The Food Insecurity Atlases, prepared in collaboration with the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, were a landmark. Extending the earlier work to the regional and district levels, the WFP proposes to prepare, in partnership with the Government, food insecurity atlases for several States.

The future beckons! As India surges ahead to take its rightful place in the comity of nations, we in the WFP look forward to the coming years with renewed faith and optimism and a firm belief that hunger and undernourishment can be banished.

The revised thrust of the WFP endeavours will be to bring the hungry, malnourished, and vulnerable within the ambit of human development, to change the course of their destiny and unleash their potential through opening a new world of opportunities.

East Asia

South Korea - An Unmitigated Disaster for Korea in Washington

The South Korean and U.S. defense chiefs in the Security Consultative Meeting in Washington on Friday agreed to complete the handover of wartime operational control of Korean forces to Seoul after Oct. 15, 2009 and no later than March 15, 2012. The two defense ministers in a joint communiqué urged North Korea to refrain from any further action that might aggravate tensions. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered assurances of a firm U.S. commitment and immediate support to South Korea, including “continuation of the extended deterrence offered by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, consistent with the Mutual Defense Treaty.”

On the Proliferation Security Initiative we are so reluctant to join, Rumsfeld told reporters, "the (nuclear) programs of Iran and North Korea punctuate the importance of counter proliferations efforts of that type. And the Republic of Korea's an important country, and needless to say, we've expressed the hope that they will decide to participate (in the Proliferation Security Initiative)." In the background, a senior Pentagon official was denying reports from a South Korean briefing that Gen. Burwell Bell, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, was instructed to map out a detailed nuclear defense against nuclear threats from North Korea.

The SCM was so difficult this year that the joint communiqué had to be delayed by seven-and-a-half hours. The atmosphere was so serious, it is said, that the U.S. had to issue an ultimatum that if Seoul insisted any further, the meeting would end without a joint statement. It had a case. Seoul pestered Washington to concede on the timing of the transfer of wartime operational control of its forces and the offer of a nuclear umbrella, the main themes of the meeting, reversing its own demands of only a year or a few months ago. Seoul tried to shirk agreement on the timing of the troop control handover, after saying only recently, in the president’s words, that it could be done “any time.”

Faced with firm U.S. insistence on 2009, however, it kept putting it off, from Oct. 2010 to March 15, 2012. Had this administration and president not brought up the issue for propaganda purposes, pretending the joint exercise of wartime operational control infringed on our sovereignty and stoking anti-American sentiment by doing so, the U.S., for the sake of expanding the strategic flexibility of its forces the world over, would have asked for Korean cooperation and given additional security guarantees in return.

The same is the case with the issue of the U.S. providing South Korea with a more specific nuclear umbrella against North Korea. The government, goaded by the National Security Council under direct presidential jurisdiction, attempted to delete the phrase “nuclear umbrella” at last year’s SCM, but this year it asked for an even stronger guarantee. The U.S. said, what more do you want when you have the Korea-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty? Seoul deserved the rebuff.

The government boasted it would get a U.S. promise of additional security if we are to exercise sole operational control of our troops. But the joint communiqué mentions only a firm U.S. commitment under the treaty and “immediate support.” It got no more than that for dismantling Combined Forces Command, which in time of war firmly guarantees the reinforcement of five fleets of aircraft carriers, 160 vessels, 2,500 aircraft and 690,000 troops.

Source: The Chosun Ilbo & Digital Chosun Ilbo

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China - Shanghai scandal 'implicates 50'

More than 50 people have been detained in Shanghai's widening pension fund corruption scandal, a Beijing-funded Hong Kong newspaper has reported. Several senior Shanghai officials and businessmen have already been implicated in the alleged misuse of the multi-million dollar fund. One of the country's richest men, Zhang Rongkun, was arrested at the weekend. On Sunday, President Hu Jintao said the Communist Party was determined to root out corruption.

"We are stepping up efforts to improve the rule of law and a culture for clean and honest government, and strengthen the checks and supervision on power," he said.
He also appealed for party unity at a rare joint public appearance with his predecessor Jiang Zemin.

The first high-profile head to roll in the pensions scandal was Chen Liangyu, an ally of Mr Jiang who was dismissed from his post as chief of the Communist Party in Shanghai last month.

Other leading figures tainted by the case include the head of Formula One in China, Yu Zhifei, who has been questioned by the authorities, and the country's chief statistician Qiu Xiaohua who was dismissed from his post.
Anti-corruption investigation.

Zhang Rongkun, believed to be the 16th richest man in China with a $600m fortune, was arrested by "relevant law enforcement authorities", his own firm Fuxi Investment said in a brief statement on Saturday.

Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao newspaper reported on Monday that more than 50 other businessmen and government officials were being held over the scandal. It did not give any further details.

As the anti-corruption investigation continues, it seems likely the number of people involved will grow still further, the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Shanghai says.
More than 100 central government investigators have been sent to Shanghai to investigate money that has disappeared from the city's 10 billion yuan ($1.25 billion) social security fund. The funds were allegedly used to make illegal loans and investments in real estate and other infrastructure deals.
The corruption scandal demonstrates the problems facing those who wish to end graft in China, our correspondent says.
The courts do not operate independently and almost all of those detained in Shanghai have not been seen or heard of since, he adds. There is little independent oversight. Auditors and corruption investigators are limited and the usual checks and balances that expose corruption - such as a free press and regular open elections - do not exist.

Shangai pensions scandal- Labour and social security chief, Zhu Junyi, sacked
- District governor, Qin Yu, sacked
- City's top Communist Party official, Chen Liangyu sacked
- Municipal committee's vice-secretary general, Sun Luyi, sacked
- Head of city's F1 motor racing circuit, Yu Zhifei, questioned
- Head of China's National Bureau of Statistics, Qiu Xiaohua, (pictured) sacked
- One of China's richest men, Zhang Rongkun, arrested

Source: BBC News

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North Korea - The Internet Black Hole That Is North Korea
The tragically backward, sometimes absurdist hallmarks of North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-il, are well known. There is Mr. Kim’s Elton John eyeglasses and strangely whipped, cotton-candy hairdo. And there is the North Korean “No! Yeeesssss ... No! O.K. Fear the tiger!” school of diplomacy.

A newer, more dangerous sort of North Korean eccentricity registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale earlier this month — a nuclear weapon test that has had the world’s major powers scrambling, right up through last week, to develop a policy script that would account for Mr. Kim’s new toy.

But whatever the threat — and however lush the celebrations broadcast on state-controlled television from the streets of Pyongyang in the days afterward — the stark realities of life in North Korea were perhaps most evident in a simple satellite image over the shoulder of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during an Oct. 11 briefing. The image showed the two Koreas — North and South — photographed at night.

The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights, but that other, arguably more bedrock utility of the modern age — information — was pulsating through the population.

The North was black.
This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are hard-wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned outright in 2004. In May, the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York ranked North Korea No. 1 — over also-rans like Burma, Syria and Uzbekistan — on its list of the “10 Most Censored Countries.”

That would seem to leave the question of Internet access in North Korea moot.
At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in that satellite photograph.

While other restrictive regimes have sought to find ways to limit the Internet — through filters and blocks and threats — North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.

Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk at Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group which tracks censorship around the world, put it more bluntly. “It is by far the worst Internet black hole,” he said.

That is not to say that North Korean officials are not aware of the Internet.
As far back as 2000, at the conclusion of a visit to Pyongyang, Madeleine K. Albright, then secretary of state, bid Mr. Kim to “pick up the telephone any time,” to which the North Korean leader replied, “Please give me your e-mail address.” That signaled to everyone that at least he, if not the average North Korean, was cybersavvy. (It is unclear if Ms. Albright obliged.)
These days, the designated North Korean domain suffix, “.kp” remains dormant, but several “official” North Korean sites can be found delivering sweet nothings about the country and its leader to the global conversation (an example: www.kcckp.net/en/) — although these are typically hosted on servers in China or Japan.

Mr. Kim, embracing the concept of “distance learning,” has established the Kim Il-sung Open University Web site, www.ournation-school.com — aimed at educating the world on North Korea’s philosophy of “juche” or self-reliance. And the official North Korean news agency, at www.kcna.co.jp, provides tea leaves that are required reading for anyone following the great Quixote in the current nuclear crisis.

But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few other lucky souls have access to computers, these are linked only to each other — that is, to a nationwide, closely-monitored Intranet — according to the OpenNet Initiative, a human rights project linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge and Oxford Universities in Britain.

A handful of elites have access to the wider Web — via a pipeline through China — but this is almost certainly filtered, monitored and logged.

Some small “information technology stores” — crude cybercafes — have also cropped up. But these, too, connect only to the country’s closed network. According to The Daily NK, a pro-democracy news site based in South Korea, computer classes at one such store cost more than six months wages for the average North Korean. The store, located in Chungjin, North Korea, has its own generator to keep the computers running if the power is cut, The Daily NK site said.
“It’s one thing for authoritarian regimes like China to try to blend the economic catalyst of access to the Internet with controls designed to sand off the rough edges, forcing citizens to make a little extra effort to see or create sensitive content,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford.

The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, Professor Zittrain said, because its “comprehensive official fantasy worldview” must remain inviolate. “In such a situation, any information leakage from the outside world could be devastating,” he said, “and Internet access for the citizenry would have to be so controlled as to be useless. It couldn’t even resemble the Internet as we know it.”

But how long can North Korea’s leadership keep the country in the dark?
Writing in The International Herald Tribune last year, Rebecca MacKinnon, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, suggested that North Korea’s ban on cellphones was being breached on the black market along China’s border. And as more and more cellphones there become Web-enabled, she suggested, that might mean that a growing number of North Koreans, in addition to talking to family in the South, would be quietly raising digital periscopes from the depths.

Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer nuclear arms or Internet access (or food, or reliable power), but given Mr. Kim’s interest in weapons, it is a safe bet it would not matter.
“No doubt it’s harder to make nuclear warheads than to set up an Internet network,” Mr. Pain said. “It’s all a question of priority.”

By Tom Zeller Jr.

Source: NYTimes

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South Asia

Pakistan - Musharraf amends ‘bounty’ portion: Urdu translation of autobiography

President Gen Pervez Musharraf has made an amendment to his controversial autobiography In the Line of Fire dropping the portion relating to payment of millions of dollars to Pakistan by CIA for arresting and handing over Al Qaeda suspects to the United States.

The alteration has been included in the book’s Urdu edition titled Sub Sey Pehlay Pakistan that was launched here on Saturday.

The amendment has been made in the opening paragraph of chapter 23 titled Taaqub (Manhunt) that highlights the role Pakistan played in capturing Al Qaeda suspects after 9/11 attacks on the US.

Pointing to the fact that Pakistan had captured 689 Al Qaeda members and handed over 369 of them to the US, the president notes on page 237 of the first edition: “We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of ‘not doing enough’ in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan.”

In the Urdu edition, the reference to having “earned bounties totalling millions of dollars” and prize money has been dropped.

Within two days of his book launch in New York President Musharraf had admitted having made a ‘mistake’ and indicated that an amendment was in order.

“That is my error. It doesn’t come to government of Pakistan. I should not have written that and I’m going to amend it in the future copy certainly,” he told journalists in New York on Sept 27.

His response to a question whether those dollars were staying in Pakistani economy was: “The money is certainly in Pakistan’s exchequer, in other words in Pakistan, its not anywhere.”

However, on being prompted by Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri, the president corrected himself, saying: “In our economy. Not in the exchequer.”

The Urdu version published by Ferozsons is a hard-bound edition containing 411 pages and priced at Rs495. Initially 20,000 copies have been published.

It is believed that Sehba Musharraf and president’s former deputy military secretary Brigadier Asim Saleem Bajwa, who now commands the 111 Brigade, played an active role in the publication of the Urdu edition.

The translation itself is the work of the president’s brother-in-law. Apparently, it was on their advice that the president changed the title which according to him made more sense in the Pakistan context and as he put it: “Pakistan always remains foremost in mind.”

President Musharraf has repeatedly appreciated the ‘hard work and loyalty’ of Brigadier Bajwa, the man without whom he says his book would not have been possible.

While expressing his gratitude for Mr Bajwa again on Saturday at the book launch, the president said: “He has just been promoted.” However, he hastened to add: “But that’s not because of the book!”

By Qudssia Akhlaque

Source: DAWN Group of Newspapers

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Nepal - UN makes Nepal Maoist food pledge

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has proposed to feed Nepal's Maoist rebels and their families once a peace deal has been signed with the government.
The WFP said it would begin implementing the program as soon as the two sides reach an agreement.

The multi-party government has been negotiating with the rebels since a ceasefire came into force in April.

In recent years, the WFP has been active in impoverished, food-deficit districts in remote areas of the west.

Emergency food
"We are eagerly waiting for the outcome of the ongoing peace process before we begin the operation," WFP Resident Representative Richard Ragan told the Kantipur newspaper.

He said that the package would benefit thousands of rebel fighters and their families, as well as tens of thousands of other people who have been displaced by the insurgency.

Mr Ragan said the UN has already made a policy decision to put the plans into effect.
The UN secretary general has appointed a special representative to oversee the nascent peace process.

UN officials say that over 225,000 people from 10 western districts have benefited from a recent emergency food aid programme in western Nepal.

The BBC's Surendra Phuyal in Kathmandu says that peace talks between the Maoists and the government are now at a crucial stage.

Our correspondent says that the two sides are expected to address the issue of integrating 15,000 to 20,000 armed rebel fighters into the national army and police forces.

They also have to find a solution to the rebels' insistence that they should have the right to bear arms.

More than 13,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands of people have been displaced - mainly from the insurgency-hit districts of western and eastern hills - throughout the 10-year-old insurgency.

Source: BBC News

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Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka parties in talks pact

The Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapakse, has signed an agreement with the main opposition party for a common policy in relation to the Tamil Tigers. The deal comes ahead of talks with the rebels next weekend in Geneva. The two main parties have historically been on differing ends of the political spectrum, but have now agreed to work together on key issues.

Mr Rajapakse's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)-led governing coalition needs opposition support.

Independent homeland
It has held discussions with the hardline anti-Tamil Tiger opposition but failed to come to a deal. The priority issue is the conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels. The main opposition United National Party (UNP) has in the past supported talks with the rebels as well as a devolution of power. The Tigers have been fighting for an independent homeland for more than two decades. At least 2,000 people - troops, rebels and Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim civilians - have been killed in Sri Lanka since late last year, military and truce monitors say.

By Dumeetha Luthra

Source: BBC News, Colombo

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India - Why Afzal shouldn't hang

For centuries, criminals in most countries used to be publicly executed to the applause of mobs drunk with revenge. It's only in the 20th century that capital punishment stopped being a spectacle.

The death penalty revolted many citizens and stands abolished in nearly 130 countries. However, as we move into the age of terrorism and counter-terrorism, revenge and retribution are coming back.

The Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano says: "In a world that prefers security to justice, there is loud applause whenever justice is sacrificed at the altar of security." Galeano believes executions have "a pharmaceutical effect" on the elite. Pharmacy is derived from the Greek pharmakos - "humans sacrificed to the Gods in times of crises."

A section of Indian society wants just such pharmaceutical relief through the hanging of Mohammed Afzal for the Parliament House attack of 2001.

A medieval lynch mob is being mobilised through lurid media stories which say the families of the victims of the attack cannot get justice unless Afzal is hanged. There must be no clemency for a traitor. He must die.

It is unspeakably sad that rank blood-thirst and chauvinist ultra-nationalism are disguised as an innocuous demand for justice. All manner of arguments are cited to claim that the president has no power to pardon Afzal.

However, former Solicitor General TR Andhyarujina has clarified that the power of pardon is not an individual act of grace, but is an integral part of the criminal justice system and India's constitutional scheme. It doesn't interfere with the courts.

The president is entitled to re-appraise a case, and come to a conclusion different from the court's. The purpose of the clemency power is to ensure that "the public welfare would be better served by inflicting less punishment than what the judgment has fixed."

President Kalam, acting on the cabinet's advice, should take a fresh look at Afzal's case. It is his constitutional and moral duty to ensure that there are no grey areas in the evidence on which Afzal was convicted.

Consider the facts. Afzal was not the mastermind or chief conspirator in the Parliament attack. He didn't commit murder or participate in the attack. Yet, he was sentenced to death for murder (Sec 302 of the Indian Penal Code), waging war against the state (Sec 121 and 121A), and criminal conspiracy (Sec 120A & B).
The punishment is, prima facie, excessive and disproportionate.

The investigation was completed in just 17 days by Assistant Commissioner Rajbir Singh of the Delhi police's anti-terrorism "Special Cell." A self-confessed "encounter specialist," Singh stands disgraced for extortion and corruption.

Huge gaps remain in the sequence of events, links between Afzal and the claimed masterminds (Jaish-e-Mohammed's Masood Azhar and Ghazi Baba), and the attackers' identity.

The biggest gaps pertain to the role of the J&K police's Special Task Force to whom Afzal, a former JKLF militant, surrendered. Afzal claims - without being contradicted - that he met Tariq Ahmad at an STF camp. Tariq took him to a police officer, Dravinder Singh, who introduced him to Mohammad alias Burger, named as the leader of the attackers.

Afzal brought Mohammad to Delhi, and helped him buy the car used in the attack. But he says Dravinder and Tariq ordered him to do this. Here, the investigation goes cold. There's no trace of Tariq or Dravinder. In the murky world of Kashmir's insurgency-counter-insurgency, it is hard to pinpoint crime and complicity. And it's a mystery why the police knew nothing about the activities of a closely-monitored surrendered militant. Circumstantial evidence of Afzal's involvement in conspiracy hinges on the recovery of explosives, and crucially, on records of cell phone calls to the five attackers.

However, the police couldn't explain why they broke into Afzal's house to recover explosives during his absence - when the landlord had the key. The cell phone record traced several calls from the five men to number 98114.89429 - allegedly belonging to an instrument seized from Afzal. The instrument had no SIM card. The only identity mark was its IMEI number, unique to each instrument. How did the police discover the IMEI number? There are only two ways: open the instrument, or dial a code and have the number displayed. But the officer certifying the recovery swore that he neither opened nor operated the instrument.

Besides, the claimed dates of purchase of the phone (December 4) and its first recorded operation (November 6) don't match! This large grey area in the evidence puts a big question-mark over the conclusion that Afzal must be awarded the severest punishment.

Afzal's personal deposition describes how he was drawn into secessionist militancy, but got disillusioned. After surrendering he was harassed and subjected to extortion by the STF. The picture that emerges is that of a person who isn't beyond reform.

Afzal's death sentence violates the Supreme Court's guidelines, which say that sentence should be awarded in "the rarest of rare cases" - when a murder is extremely brutal, grotesque or diabolical, or targets a community or caste. This doesn't apply to Afzal.

The judiciary has often distinguished between an act's commission and conspiracy to commit it. Nathuram Godse was hanged for Gandhiji's assassination, but not his fellow-conspirator Gopal.

In the Purulia arms-drop case - India's worst-ever security breach - the state commuted the life sentence of six men. Five ethnic-Russian Latvians were freed at the Russian government's request. Peter Bleach was freed in 2004 at the urgings of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The reasons for releasing them involved political relations with foreign governments.
In Afzal's case there are more persuasive reasons. The government must apply the "public welfare" test and take a statesman-like view based on a compassionate and humane vision.

Finally, we must recall the all-important moral argument against capital punishment. It violates a principle at the heart of any civilised society - prohibiting the planned killing of a person. Capital punishment does not deter heinous crime. All legal systems are fallible. It's immoral to extinguish a human life by assuming the opposite.

By Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.

Source: The Daily Star

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Southeast Asia

Burma - Burma discusses version of democracy

Burma has been ruled by the military for 44 years, but that could be about to change if the lofty goals set by the country's National Convention are met. Delegates to the convention, which has been meeting for most of this month, said they expected it to finish its work on a new constitution by next year - thereby completing the first stage of the military's so-called "seven stage path to democracy".

This year foreign journalists were given rare access to the opening stages of the meeting.

To get to the Nyaung Hna Pin camp, where the convention is taking place, we drove through flat, flooded fields, a landscape akin to a tropical Holland.
Armed soldiers guarded the entrance, and gave our bus a cursory check for possible bombs.

This might be where Burma's political future is being mapped out, but ordinary Burmese have not been invited.

Only the 1,086 delegates, and their military guards, get to see the process first hand. The delegates are confined to the camp for weeks at a time, with only a karaoke bar and a small outdoor cinema for entertainment.
Unusual 'democracy'

The delegates arrived at the opening session of the convention in full ethnic finery - a requirement to give the impression that the meeting represents all of Burma's people. Inside the hall, I saw crudely printed signs for other groups, labelled Peasants, Workers, Intellectuals and Intelligentsia.

But almost every one of the delegates has been hand-picked by the military, and none felt comfortable talking to foreign journalists.

"It might not produce a democracy that you are used to," Professor Tun Aung Chain told me. "It could be quite different, according to the present situation in the country".

Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan, the information minister, was less equivocal.
"There are 30 countries that still have unelected members of parliament," he said, "Even in Britain, your upper house has unelected members".

I pointed out that in Britain, these were not serving officers in an army that has run the country for nearly half a century, but he brushed that point aside.
The military is running the National Convention, and intends to keep a deciding role over any future government. One clause in the new constitution which is not negotiable is that the president must have had at least 15 years of military service.
A thorn in the side of the military's plans is the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, which won more than 80% of the seats in the last election 16 years ago.

It has boycotted the National Convention since 1995, saying it does not want to take part in a process so dominated by the armed forces. In the opening speech at the meeting - against a monumental backdrop reminiscent of party congresses from the old Soviet Union - the NLD got no mention from General Thein Sein, the fourth-ranking officer in Burma who is running the convention.

He merely referred to "destructive elements" whom, he claimed, were using terrorist methods to undermine the convention.

His speech was peppered with claims of dramatic improvements that the country has supposedly enjoyed under military rule. Dialogue with the NLD is ruled out by the generals. They accuse the party of being stubborn, confrontational and under the influence of "foreign powers".

'Accelerating impoverishment'
There is a very different reality away from the remote world of the convention. Rangoon is a dilapidated city, its once magnificent colonial buildings crumbling, and even more recent concrete towers showing signs of neglect. The city feels several decades behind those in neighbouring countries. If there has been any economic progress over the past decade, it is impossible to see.

"The situation is one of accelerating impoverishment for a significant proportion of the population," I was told by Charles Petrie, who heads the UN assistance operations in Burma.

The NLD headquarters in Rangoon seems afflicted by the same decay that you see elsewhere in the city.

The building is dark and quiet. Going there requires some nerve, even as a journalist on an officially-approved visa, as there are military spooks watching and taking note of everyone going in and out.

How much more intimidating it must be for Burmese citizens to go there.
But there are always groups of people gathered at the office, either for political discussions or other classes, surrounded by piled up chairs, bundles of fading documents, and walls covered in portraits of Aung San Suu Kyi - who is just a stone's throw away, kept in isolation in her house by the military.
I have to remind myself that people have been jailed, tortured and killed just for supporting the NLD.

"We are still functioning," said NLD spokesman Henthe Myint. "You can see by the military's anxiety to discredit us that we are still a political force in this country."

It is all too obvious that the years of harassment have ground the NLD down, limiting it to just a token presence in most of the country.

But that shabby office in Rangoon still felt more real than the stage-managed performance we were shown at the National Convention.
The military is confident it will have a new constitution within a year - but it will be a document over which the Burmese people will have no say.

By Jonathan Head BBC South East Asia correspondent

Source: BBC News

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Timor LoroSae - Outbreak of violence halted in East Timor

Dili, East Timor United Nations peacekeepers were brought in Sunday to restore order to the capital of East Timor when fighting broke out between rival ethnic gangs after the discovery of two mutilated bodies.

The fighting - mostly stone-throwing - took place at the Comoro market but was halted by the arrival of about 100 peacekeeping troops. No arrests were made.

A group from the eastern part of the country became incensed after bodies of two men from the Baucau and Lautém districts were found with their arms, legs and heads removed and placed in sacks.

The two were believed to have been killed after approaching a checkpoint set up by a group of western youths in the Aimutin area of Dili.

"We just cannot accept that our friends were killed like animals, like dogs," said João da Costa, 21, a member of the eastern district group, which had set up a checkpoint of its own near the market.

A UN peacekeeper, Emir Bilget, speaking through an interpreter, asked the eastern group to take down the blockade of stones and wood and allow the police to investigate.

"I hope you calm down. The police already know who killed your friends, and now we are seeking testimony from you so that the perpetrators can be taken to court," Bilget said.

Australian soldiers, who lead the UN contingent, arrived and immediately combed the area.

They aborted an attempt to detain one man there after protests from youths shouting, "Australia go out, Australian no good, not neutral."

The peacekeeping force, which also includes soldiers from New Zealand and Malaysia, was deployed in East Timor in May after large sections of the military deserted, but it has struggled to contain sporadic eruptions of violence. The latest fighting follows tit-for-tat murders this month that claimed the lives of two young men - one each from the eastern and western parts of the country.


Source: Agence France - Presse

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Vietnam - Warning on Viet corals

Vietnamese marine scientists warn that one of the country's premier coral reefs has been nearly destroyed by fishing practices using explosives and poison. Up to 85 percent of corals had died around Co To Island, near the World Heritage-listed island seascape of Halong Bay, warned the National Agency of Aquatic Resources Protection and a group of oceanographers.

Besides dynamite and cyanide fishing, corals were also being crushed by ship anchors and smothered by seaweed that has proliferated due to overfishing, said Chu Tien Vinh, head of the agency.

The group of researchers proposed the Quang Ninh provincial fisheries department ban fishing and prevent ships from anchoring around the Co To archipelago.
Vietnam, with a 3,200-kilometer coastline, has boasted a rich and diverse marine ecology with 1,100 square kilometers of reefs, but the World Resources Institute has warned that over 95 percent of it is severely threatened.

Destructive human activities include overfishing, coastal developments for tourism and industry, pollution and sedimentation, and fishing practices such as drift net fishing that scours the ocean floor. Vietnamese scientists last week also called for the setting up of a marine reserve around southern Phu Quoc island, to save the coral and marine life around the island that is now being rapidly developed for tourism.

Source: Agence France – Press

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Central Asia

Iran - Iran invites West to return to nuclear talks

Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki on Saturday invited the major Western powers to return to the negotiating table to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
“We advise them to return to negotiations and not to retry the path that they have already tried,” Mottaki told reporters at a joint press conference after a meeting with Belarusian Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov.

Mottaki stated that Tehran sees no reason for suspending uranium enrichment.
“Enrichment of uranium by the Islamic Republic is legal and one of its rights under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),” he said.

All the inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities indicate no deviation toward weaponization, he added.

Despite intensive talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union on October 17 referred Iran’s nuclear dossier back to the UN Security Council, which is now working on a resolution that would impose economic sanctions against Tehran.

Measures like the Security Council action are tools used to deprive the Iranian people of their rights, Mottaki observed.

“We regard comparing our peaceful nuclear activities with any kind of nuclear weapons test as unacceptable and unrealistic,” he added.

Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana held a series of talks last month to find a solution to the crisis.

Mottaki expressed regret that the West did not handle the Larijani-Solana talks constructively but added that Iran still believes that the negotiations can continue.
“We hope the Security Council comes to its senses and lives up to its responsibilities. Unfortunately, the council’s record over the past year has not been satisfactory,” he said.

“However, we hope the issue returns to the International Atomic Energy Agency.” Accusations that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to peace are only being made by the United States to help it reach its political goals, but Tehran expects the Europeans to pursue the issue logically and independently, the Iranian foreign minister said.

Mottaki stated that he and the Belarusian foreign minister discussed issues of mutual interest and prepared the documents for bilateral agreements which are to be finalized during President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s next visit to Belarus.

He also thanked Belarusian officials for supporting Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology. Martynov called his negotiations with Iranian officials positive, saying, “During the talks we discussed international and regional issues and economic, financial, and trade cooperation.”

Tehran and Minsk are in consensus on many international issues, especially on the idea that the world should be multilateral and not unilateral, he said.
Belarus also believes that Iran, as an NPT signatory, has the right to conduct any nuclear activity authorized by the treaty, Martynov noted.

Source: Tehran Times

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Afghanistan - UN warns of Afghan food shortage

Nearly two million people in southern Afghanistan will need food aid this winter because of drought, the UN and Afghan government have warned. They have appealed for more than $40m in emergency funds, in addition to an earlier appeal for $76m. Afghanistan is facing a shortfall in its wheat harvest just after beginning to recover from an earlier drought. The crop failure comes as fighting continues in the south between Nato-led troops and the Taleban.

The food shortage is being blamed on intensified fighting against Taleban insurgents in the troubled southern provinces and expanding cultivation of opium poppies instead of food.

In July, UK charity Christian Aid warned that millions of people in Afghanistan faced starvation after a drought destroyed crops. A survey of 66 villages suggested farmers in the worst affected areas had lost all their produce. Less than half of the $76m in emergency funds sought in July have been received so far.

Source: BBC News

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Australia – Telstra stake purchased by Japanese investors

The Australian government sold a 435 million Australian dollar, or $330 million, stake in Telstra, the nation's biggest telephone company, to individual Japanese investors, Finance Minister Nick Minchin of Australia, said Monday.

A minimum of 120 million shares will be allocated to Japanese investors, Minchin said. The government said Sunday that it had sold half of a planned 8 billion dollar offering in Telstra through stockbrokers and financial planners.

"This is another pleasing indication of the level of interest by the investing community," Minchin said in a statement released in Canberra. "Japanese investors like stocks that offer a good yield."

The government, which owns more than half of Telstra, pitched an offer with inducements like a discount and free shares as it tries to sell a stock that has plunged more than 50 percent since 1999. Investors in the share sale, dubbed T3, get a dividend yield of 14 percent in the first year, more than 10 times the yield of Japanese five-year government bonds.

Overseas investors own 7 percent of shares in Telstra, compared with 73 percent for Telecom Corporation, the largest New Zealand telephone company.

Prime Minister John Howard of Australia on Aug. 25 retreated from plans to sell the government's entire 51.8 percent stake in Telstra, currently worth 23.4 billion dollars, after a slump in earnings and a yearlong clash with management over regulations.

The rest of the government's stake will go into the Future Fund, an investment pool to cover pension liabilities for politicians, defense workers and bureaucrats.

The government has left open the option of increasing the share sale by 1.2 billion dollars through an over-allotment option, known as a greenshoe.

The public offering may be increased to 12 billion dollars if demand is sufficient, the Financial Times reported last month, citing unidentified people close to the sales team.

ABN AMRO Holding, Goldman Sachs JBWere and UBS were hired last year to manage the share sale.

The chief executive of Telstra, Sol Trujillo, cut his earnings forecasts earlier this month, due to rules that allow rivals cheaper access to his network.

Annual growth in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization are expected to be about 2.5 percent, down from a previous forecast of 5 percent.

Telstra stock has fallen 28 percent since Trujillo took over in July 2005 as he clashed with the government and regulators and cut earnings forecasts. At the same time, customers have shifted from high-margin landline phones to less profitable wireless and Internet services.

By Fergus Maguire

Source: Bloomberg News

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Written: by LuisB