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India will not join other countries in pushing for democratic reforms in military-ruled Myanmar, the defence minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said here Saturday.
   ‘Our basic principle is to live in peaceful co-existence and we do not believe in exporting ideologies,’ Mukherjee said at a forum in Singapore when asked why India was not pressing its neighbour to undertake reforms.
   ‘It is for the people of the country to decide what type of government they would like to have,’ said Mukherjee, who was attending a high-level regional security conference.
   Myanmar’s ruling junta has been accused of serious human rights abuses, including the detention of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other opposition leaders, and India is seen as having leverage on the regime due to strong bilateral ties.
   Myanmar last week defied an international clamour for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release by extending her detention by another year. She has spent 10 of the past 17 years in detention.
   The United States said on Thursday that it had broad United Nations support for its plans to introduce a UN resolution pushing the Myanmar regime to change its repressive policies.
   Meanwhile, India fully supports the peace process in Sri Lanka but will not play an active role because it may ‘complicate’ the situation, Mukherjee said.
   Mukherjee said that ‘India is not actively participating in this process’ because of ethnic reasons and its proximity to Sri Lanka.
   India believes a ‘pro-active and active participation will complicate the issue instead of resolving it, but we stand fully behind the peace process which has been initiated,’ the minister said.
   Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapakse on Friday launched talks with opposition parties to hammer out a plan to grant autonomy to separatist Tamil rebels.
   Violence has recently escalated in Sri Lanka, where more than 600 people have been killed since December despite a 2002 ceasefire between Tamil Tiger rebels and the Colombo government and its troops.
   India has in the past offered support for the peace process but refrained from getting involved in the conflict following its disastrous military intervention during the 1980s.
   New Delhi dispatched a peacekeeping force to Tamil-held regions but ended up battling the rebels, and finally withdrew its forces after more than 1,200 Indian troops had died.
   Subsequently a Tamil female suicide bomber killed former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who had ordered the deployment to Sri Lanka.

Thousands of supporters of Taiwan’s opposition People First Party took to the streets of Taipei on Saturday to demand the resignation of embattled president Chen Shui-bian, the party said.
   ‘A Bian steps down,’ they shouted, referring to Chen by his nickname while waving matching placards and the orange flags of the PFP, Taiwan’s second largest opposition party.
   The protestors gathered outside the presidential office and in front of a giant black billboard printed with words such as ‘graft’ and ‘corruption’. Some 500 policemen were dispatched to maintain order.
   ‘We can’t let A Bian waste Taiwan’s democracy. He must stop down so the probes into the scandals can carry on and the truth can be unveiled,’ PFP chairman James Soong told his supporters.
   ‘After A Bian steps down, Taiwanese people can refind the dignity of Taiwan’s democracy,’ he said.
   Organisers estimated a turnout of more than 10,000. A police estimate was not available.
   Chen this week announced that he would hand over some of his decision-making powers in an apparent bid to counter mounting pressure over a corruption scandal.
   His son-in-law Chao Chien-ming has been detained since May 25 in connection with alleged insider trading, prompting demands from his own party that he drop his one-man leadership style.
   Ma Ying-jeou, head of Taiwan’s main opposition party Kuomintang, on Saturday called for Chen to quit over the scandal, saying the president lacked credibility and would soon find it impossible to govern.

Aftershocks rattled Indonesia's quake-ravaged region overnight, spreading panic among thousands of homeless survivors, as aid groups rushed to deliver clean water and warned of an increased threat of bird flu.
   Several aftershocks, which Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said registered about magnitude 4, shook the region overnight, sending many survivors running from their makeshift tents.
   ‘Last night and this morning I felt some quakes. I was sleeping. I just ran away, out of the tent,’ said 40-year-old Hardady, who lives in the village of Kerten, which was badly hit by the quake.
   The World Health Organisation said on Saturday that the magnitude 6.3 quake, which flattened villages in Yogyakarta and Central Java provinces at dawn a week ago and killed over 6,200, had forced some survivors to seek shelter in poultry sheds.
   ‘Is there an increased threat and danger? Yes, it's something we have to be very watchful of,’ a WHO spokeswoman said. ‘In Indonesia there's been a high record of human cases and we have to look out for avian flu.’
   Poultry across Indonesia have died from bird flu, but the 36 human deaths reported since the disease emerged in the country in late 2003. No human deaths have been recorded in the quake zone.
   WHO is also concerned about the spread of diarrhea, cholera and viral hepatitis, but said there were no reports of outbreaks.
   Aid groups are distributing 65,000 jerry cans with water purification kits in the two provinces, which can provide a family of five with clean water for a month.
   ‘Dirty water is causing skin infections, especially in young children,’ Korean doctor Hong Kwong Moon said in the village of Kerten. ‘There are also some cases of diarrhea here. The water is contaminated, people are washing with it and it infects skin.’
   The United Nations has unveiled plans for a $103 million six-month relief operation to provide aid like emergency shelter, medical assistance, clean water, sanitation, food and child protection across the quake-devastated region.
   Last week's quake reduced more than 100,000 homes to rubble and many in the region are now living in flimsy shelters in front of what used to be their homes.
   In the small village of Tangkil in the hills high above Yogyakarta, 440 km east of the Indonesian capital Jakarta, 36-year-old Rina Khoiriyah stands by the side of the winding road crying as she hands out hand-written letters asking for help.

International aid agencies Saturday expressed fears that their crowded refugee camps in East Timor could become flashpoints with people smuggling in weapons to seek revenge for the recent violence that has rocked the capital Dili.
   Aid agencies estimate that there are 100,000 people in the camps – 70,000 in Dili and 30,000 in outlying areas—and they are concerned over the health and sanitary conditions faced by the refugees.
   ‘The camps are very tense, people are very scared, but they are also very angry, some want revenge for what has happened to them,’ Luiz Vieira, chief of mission in East Timor for the International Organisation for Migration, said.
   ‘If there was a major incident in the camps it would have considerable consequences,’ said Vieira, who is helping to coordinate the overall relief effort in East Timor.
   ‘There are rumours, and there is a possibility, (that) people have smuggled weapons into the camps.’
   Aid agencies said they were discussing the issue with the 2,200-strong international force sent to restore peace in the Timorese capital amid the worst violence since the tiny nation split from Indonesia seven years ago.
   They said they were urging them to handle the situation delicately as they were concerned about sending armed patrols into such a fevered atmosphere.
   Vieira said stepping up armed patrols around the camps might help defuse the situation because it would provide protection to the refugees from outside attacks.
   He said fresh humanitarian supplies including food rations, water bladders and tarpualins were being sent in to East Timor, but sanitary conditions in the camps were an increasing concern.
   ‘For the very, very immediate future, there is enough food.
   ‘But the sanitary conditions are becoming more of a concern. We’re trying to make the conditions as clean as possible by providing additional latrines but it’s difficult in such overcrowded conditions.’
   Refugees, fearing arson attacks and violence between ethnic groups, began pouring into the camps when the latest violence began at the end of April but the numbers have exploded in the past week.

A high-level UN meeting on AIDS agreed Friday on a global strategy to fight the epidemic which civil groups slammed for a lack of specific commitments and for coy references to high-risk groups like prostitutes.
   Government and UN negotiators had worked until 3:30am (0730 GMT) to thrash out the final draft of the hotly debated political declaration that was adopted by the UN General Assembly at the end of the three-day conference in New York.
   Assembly president Jan Eliasson insisted that the declaration was ‘a good, substantial and forward-looking document’ that contained stronger language than might have been expected given deep divisions over issues such as sexual practices and gender equality.
   Eliasson noted specific pledges to empower women and girls, as well as detailed language on HIV prevention, including explicit references to male and female condom use.
   Such references had been opposed by certain Muslim and conservative Latin American countries.
   The declaration—the first of its kind since a landmark UN AIDS summit in 2001 – aimed to lay down a blueprint for achieving the goal of universal access to AIDS prevention, treatment and care by 2010.
   But the draft stopped short of listing those most at risk to HIV infection, such as sex workers, intravenous drug users and homosexuals, and opted instead for the euphemistic term ‘vulnerable groups.’
   While it ‘recognised’ the UN estimate that 20-23 billion dollars in annual funding would be needed to support scaled-up AIDS responses by 2010, it offered no binding commitment to achieving that goal.
   ‘We are furious,’ said Aditi Sharma, HIV/AIDS campaign and policy coordinator for ActionAid International.
   ‘It is incomprehensible how negotiators could come up with such a weak declaration when we needed urgent action to stop 8,500 people dying and 13,500 people from becoming infected every day,’ Sharma said.
   AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognised in 1981, according to UNAIDS, the UN agency coordinating the fight against the disease.
   Gender equality was one of the more contentious topics under debate at the meeting, and the final draft contained fresh language pledging countries to allow women greater control over their sexual and reproductive health, ‘free of coercion, discrimination and violence.’
   UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot said the declaration the declaration represented ‘the next stage’ in the fight against AIDS.
   ‘Even though we may have differences of tactics, as was clear this week, we are all a critical piece of the same strategy,’ said Piot, who praised the input of the action groups attending the conference but rejected their suggestions that the document was blinkered and ineffective.
   ‘Everybody will find something that is missing in it,’ Piot said. ‘But, for the first time, a number of some of the most controversial issues in AIDS are in there with an internationally agreed text.’
   The need for preventive education—particularly for young women—was highlighted at the opening of Friday’s session by US First Lady Laura Bush.
   ‘More people need to know how AIDS is transmitted—and every country has an obligation to educate its citizens,’ Bush told the packed General Assembly hall.
   ‘This is why every country must also improve literacy, especially for women and girls, so they can learn to make wise choices that will keep them healthy and safe,’ she said.

Heavily armed militiamen roamed the streets of the lawless Somali capital on Saturday as war-weary residents cowered in their homes fearing new clashes between Islamists and a US-backed warlord alliance.
   A day after at least 11 people were killed in fighting north of Mogadishu and imams urged thousands of Muslims to fight the enemy of Islam, elders shuttled between the sides seeking a formal truce to cement a tense lull.
   Yet the prospects for a ceasefire appeared slim with factional commanders re-positioning and re-arming their fighters, and neither camp showed any sign they were ready to end the bloodiest violence the city has seen in 15 years.
   ‘We are working tirelessly to bring peace to Mogadishu but it seems we are failing,’ said mediator Hussein Mohamud Dahir, 67. ‘The rivals are now preparing themselves for heavy gunbattles.’
   ‘Despite this break in fighting, we cannot trust that this is lasting peace,’ said Mogadishu resident Khadija Afrah. ‘One side must be eliminated, otherwise the fighting will continue.’
   At least 327 people have now been killed and more than 1,500 wounded, many of them civilians, in three months of battles for control of Mogadishu in the bloodiest violence since the country collapsed into anarchy in 1991.
   The clashes pit the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism against militia loyal to the capital’s 11 Islamic courts, which are accused of harbouring terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.

The European Union has resumed all suspended projects worth 17 million euros (22 million US dollars) in Nepal, and expressed interest in assisting the peace process here, The Himalayan Times reported yesterday.
   ‘We are resuming the energy project worth 10 million euros (13 million dollars) and a project on conflict mitigation worth 7 million euros (9.2 million dollars),’ the visiting deputy director general of the European Commission to Nepal Herve Jouanjean was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
   Jouanjean, who will wrap up his visit Saturday, also said he discussed with government officials about the possible contributions of the European Commission on the provision of peace-building support to Nepal.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, urged China Saturday to explain its increased military spending to the world, saying it was in its interest to demystify actions that others find potentially threatening.
   Speaking at an international security conference in Singapore, Rumsfeld said China had every right to decide how to invest its resources, but the rest of the world also needed to understand Beijing’s intentions.
   ‘The only issue on transparency is that China would benefit by demystifying the reasons why they are investing in what they are investing in, in my view,’ Rumsfeld said.
   A Pentagon report last month said China was spending two to three times more on its military than the 35 billion dollars a year it has acknowledged.
   The report concluded that while Taiwan appears to be the near-term focus of China’s military spending, the buildup poses a potential threat to the United States over the longer term.
   Rumsfeld did not go as far as saying that China was a potential threat or future military rival to the US in a question and answer session with defence and security officials attending the so-called Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore.
   He said he thought China’s primary objective was a peaceful reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.
   But, he argued that as China’s stake in the global economy grows it will face pressure to explain its behaviour to the outside world.

Activity intensified Saturday at Indonesia’s smouldering Mount Merapi, as scientists warned that the magma dome atop the volcano had grown at an alarming rate since last week’s earthquake.
   Dozens of lava trails and heat clouds spilled out of Merapi in the early hours of Saturday, said Dewi Sri of the vulcanology office in Yogyakarta, 30 kilometres south of the peak.
   The 2,914-meter high volcano, which set off alerts in mid-May, had gradually calmed down before reawakening last week following a strong earthquake that shook the region, killing over 6,200 people.
   Scientists have warned that the earthquake could increase the threat posed by Merapi, saying the magma dome forming at the peak may crack or collapse, spewing out millions of cubic metres of volcanic rock and lava.
   Sri said the dome, which had been stable since starting to build up in late April, was now growing at ‘an average rate of 170,000 cubic meters per day’, with total volume approaching some four million cubic meters.

Some 55,000 earthquake survivors will be relocated due to the danger posed by monsoon landslides in Pakistani Kashmir, officials said Saturday.
   ‘A strategy is being evolved to relocate some 50 to 55 thousand people from areas prone to landslides before the start of monsoon season,’ the region’s top administrator Kashif Murtaza said.
   Murtaza said that 18 villages were likely to be affected.
   The government would work with the United Nations and other aid agencies get the people out of harm’s way, he said.
   ‘It is a big challenge to relocate the most vulnerable to safer places before the monsoon starts,’ Murtaza said.
   Depending on how many people need to be resettled the government may have to buy land near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, he added.
   The government already pays 25,000 jobless survivors a monthly benefit of 3,000 rupees (50 dollars) under a six-month grant programme.

Iran on Saturday stuck by its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, despite a new international offer of talks and incentives if it agreed to halt the sensitive nuclear work.
   The foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was to visit Tehran within the next 48 hours to officially submit the proposals, and pledged the Islamic regime would examine the offer.
   The five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany on Thursday agreed to offer Iran incentives and new talks but are insisting that Tehran first suspend enrichment.
   ‘Negotiations must be without preconditions,’ Mottaki said of demands that his country stop enrichment, work that could in theory be extended to military purposes. The process is at the centre of fears the country could make nuclear weapons.
   ‘No condition for negotiations is acceptable; especially the condition that has been set,’ he added, but nevertheless said Iran ‘needed to examine these proposals’ before giving its formal response.
   ‘Javier Solana will in Tehran in the next two days to submit the new proposals to Iran,’ Mottaki was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency, adding that Iran had agreed to his visit.
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said Friday that Iran had only weeks to respond to the proposal of trade, security and technology incentives if Iran agrees to a moratorium on enrichment.
   Crucially, the United States has also promised to join the talks if Iran agrees.
   ‘There is no kind of ultimatum deadline, although I think we are talking about several weeks,’ the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, also said.
   Russia opposes the use of force against Iran and believes it is ‘early’ to discuss the possibility of sanctions, President Vladimir Putin echoed Friday.
   The United States, however, has said independently that no option—including military action—is off the table in dealing with Iran.
   US national intelligence director John Negroponte said in London Friday that Iran appeared determined to make nuclear weapons and could develop such an arsenal as early as 2010.
   But the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also repeated late Friday that Iran would not back down to pressure.
   ‘Pressure by certain Western countries aiming to make us abandon our rights will not show results,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, some countries that possess nuclear weapons arsenals... want to deprive us of our absolute rights.’
   Iran insists it only wants to generate electricity, and that fuel cycle work is therefore a right enshrined by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

US leaders admitted Friday that they are worried by mounting accusations of civilian killings by the US military in Iraq, but expressed confidence that they would be thoroughly investigated.
   The president, George W Bush, is ‘troubled’ by all of the allegations made against US forces, a White House spokesman said. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said the Marines would ‘soon’ release the results of an inquiry into killings in the Iraqi city of Haditha last November.
    ‘My impression is that the Marine Corps is handling it well,’ Rumsfeld said on the sidelines of an Asian security meeting in Singapore.
   All of the alleged killings have taken place in the troubled regions around Baghdad that have become notorious as insurgent strongholds.
   The US military is investigating whether US Marines killed 24 civilians in the town northwest of Baghdad after a marine was killed by a roadside bomb. A separate inquiry is looking into whether there was a cover-up over the involvement in the killings.
   Time magazine said Marines killed seven people in one house and then another 12 people in neighbouring homes, as well as shooting dead the driver and four passengers of a passing taxi.
   US Marines cleared in Iraq massacre
   US Marines were cleared of misconduct over 11 deaths of Iraqi civilians in the town of Ishaqi after an inquiry, a Pentagon spokesman told local media Friday.
   ‘Allegations that the troops executed a family living in this safe house, and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an air strike, are absolutely false,’ Major General William Caldwell told the BBC.
   ‘The investigation revealed the ground force commander, while capturing and killing terrorists, operated in accordance with the rules of engagement governing our combat forces in Iraq,’ he told the British broadcaster. According to the BBC and US media reports, the military inquiry cleared US forces of wrongdoing during the raid, in the village of Ishaqi, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on March 15.
   US officials said at the time that four people died in a fire fight after US forces were tipped off that a supporter of Al-Qaeda was visiting a house in Ishaqi. The BBC showed video Friday of 11 bodies, including women and children.
   The latest allegations of US military killings of Iraqi civilians came as the Pentagon is probing an alleged massacre by US Marines of unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.
   Brigadier general Donald Campbell confirmed the Ishaqi inquiry earlier Friday.

Seven policemen were killed and 10 people wounded by an insurgent attack on a checkpoint near the Iraqi city of Baquba, north-east of Baghdad, according to local police.
   The guerrillas threw hand grenades and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles at the Al-Razi checkpoint at the southwest entrance to the city at 1:00pm (0900 GMT). Among the wounded were four policemen and six civilians.
   Meanwhile, one Russian was killed and four others kidnapped in west Baghdad on Saturday, an interior ministry official said, amid confusion as to how many were diplomats.
   A spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry said, ‘We are trying to clarify the situation on the spot.’
   But he added, ‘They are all Russians, there are no Iraqis among them.’

Early monsoon death toll hits 87 in India
The death toll from lightning strikes and powerful storms rose to 87 Saturday as annual summer monsoon rains tore through India earlier than usual, authorities said. Another 12 people died in two states due to lightning and accidents caused by lashing rains on top of 75 deaths reported earlier in the week, the Press Trust of India news agency said Saturday, citing police. In the eastern state of Jharkand, six people were struck dead by lightning Friday afternoon while another two had died the previous night. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, two people died Friday after trees uprooted by heavy winds fell on them while another two were killed in house collapses.

Three soldiers killed in Philippines
Communist insurgents killed at least three soldiers in the mountains of the northern Philippines, the police and rebel spokesmen said on Saturday. The three soldiers were killed in an ambush by communist New People’s Army guerrillas in Balbalan town on Wednesday, said provincial police chief superintendent Pedro Ramos.The information was confirmed in a separate interview by regional NPA spokesman Tipon Gil-ayab. The NPA also said they killed two more soldiers and wounded four troops in an attack on an army outpost in Pinukpok town on the same day but the government could not confirm this. The 7,400-strong NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which has been waging a 37-year Maoist insurgency.

Tibetan exiles vote for premier
Thousands of Tibetan exiles, among them saffron-robed monks and nuns, lined up in this north Indian hill station Saturday to cast their votes for a de facto prime minister. Although voting was slow in the first few hours after polls opened at 9:00am (0330 GMT), election officials expected turnout to build during the day. Two candidates are in the fray and voting is taking place at 53 polling stations set up by the election commission in India, Nepal, North America, Europe, Australia and Taiwan. It is only the second time Tibetans will participate in popular polls to elect their ‘Kalon Tripa’ or premier, who runs an exiled administration that holds no real sway in Tibet itself.

Pakistani held
for raping
A man has been arrested in southwestern Pakistan for the rape and murder of an eight-year old girl whose decomposed body was found in a bin, the police said Saturday. ‘Police have formally arrested a 22-year-old domestic servant after two days of investigations in connection with the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl,’ Mohammed Yaqub, police chief of southwest Baluchistan province said. The girl went missing on March 29 from outside her home in Quetta city and her decomposed body was found in a bin on Monday, Yaqub said. Doctors discovered during the post mortem that the girl had been raped before she was killed, he said.
— AFP

Quake hits Iran,
two killed
A strong earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale jolted southern Iran on Saturday, killing two and injuring two others. The head of Hormozgan province Natural Disaster Department, Masoud Dalman, told state radio that the four-year-old girl was killed in the village of Ramkan on the Gulf island of Qeshm just off the coast from Bandar Abbas. The quake struck at 10:45 am, official media reported, with the epicentre at the port town of Khamir.
— Reuters

Montenegro
to proclaim independence
Montenegro was poised to proclaim independence on Saturday following a referendum in which the tiny Balkan state voted in favour of separation from Serbia. The Montenegrin parliament was due to meet at 8:00pm to be presented with a final report on the vote by the referendum commission’s chairman, EU-appointed Slovak diplomat Frantisek Lipka. According to official results 55.5 percent of some 420,000 voters on May 21 supported independence—narrowly above the EU-set 55 percent threshold—compared to 44.5 percent who wanted to retain the union with Serbia, the last vestige of the former Yugoslav federation.
— AFP

Strong turnout
in Czech poll
Czech voters were casting their ballots on the second and final day of legislative elections Saturday with a high turnout signalled after a campaign dominated by a scandal surrounding Social Democrat Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek. A top police investigator alleged in the last days of the campaign that Paroubek, his minister of the interior and police chiefs tried to block murder and corruption probes.
— AFP