Indian security forces opened fire on pro-independence demonstrators in Muslim-majority Kashmir on Monday, killing at least four people, while more than 100 were hurt in clashes, the police said.
   The protesters were shot as troops struggled to disperse anti-India marchers who rallied across the dispute-hit region in defiance of a strict curfew.
   Authorities also arrested three leading separatists ahead of a planned rally on Monday in the centre of Srinagar, the main city in Indian-ruled Kashmir.
   One of the protesters killed Monday was a man shot on the outskirts of Srinagar, while another man was killed in Pulwama town, 30 kilometres away, the police said.
   ‘Security forces had to open fire when protesters attacked them with stones and sticks,’ police officer Imtiaz Ahmed said.
   A young woman and a 16-year-old boy were killed in two villages north of Srinagar when security forces fired on hundreds of demonstrators who had ‘violated curfew restrictions,’ the police said.
   The police reported more than 100 people were injured Monday across the Kashmir valley in clashes between security forces and demonstrators.
   The recent troubles have been triggered by a state government plan announced in June to donate land to a Hindu shrine trust in the Kashmir valley. The decision was later reversed after massive Muslim protests, angering Hindus.
   The strict curfew was imposed starting Sunday to ‘discourage separatist rallies during which residents have openly paraded green Islamic flags and chanted pro-militant and anti-India slogans,’ a police official said.
   Residents said shops and offices were shuttered and the streets were empty.
   ‘We are not even being allowed to peep out through windows,’ said Fayaz Ahmed, 42. ‘We have called in the army to assist the police in enforcing curfew,’ the police Inspector General SM Sahai told reporters in Srinagar.
   Thousands of troops were deployed Monday to the venue where protesters had planned to rally, Srinagar’s Red Square, with fencing and barbed wire blocking entry points so people could not gather.
   The square is where India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1948 promised Kashmiris the right to decide their future in a referendum on self-determination.
   ‘It is very tense out here. There are only policemen visible on the streets,’ said Joginder Singh, a Red Square resident.
   The police used loudspeakers to urge residents to stay indoors.
   Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who head the hardline and moderate wings of the region’s separatist alliance, were arrested overnight, the police said.
   The pair led a series of large pro-independence demonstrations over the past two weeks. State-owned media said the men were being held for ‘instigating crowds and causing law-and-order problems.’
   Masarat Alam, Geelani’s top aide, accused India of using ‘all its might to suppress our peaceful movement’ and demanded to know the whereabouts of the separatist leaders.
   A third senior separatist, Yasin Malik, was detained as he tried to reach Red Square on Monday, witnesses said.
   Since June, at least 35 Muslims and three Hindus have died in police shootings on protesters in the Kashmir valley and the mainly Hindu area of Jammu.

Israel freed 198 Palestinian prisoners on Monday in a gesture to the president, Mahmud Abbas, as the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, arrived in the region to spur US-backed peace talks.
   The prisoners were welcomed by thousands of cheering supporters at an outdoor celebration at Abbas’s headquarters in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.
   ‘The release of this group fills us with joy but we will not be satisfied until all prisoners are released, the 11,000 who are still waiting,’ Abbas told the crowd, referring to Palestinians still in Israeli jails.
   ‘There will be no peace without the release of all our prisoners,’ he added.
   The release took place just hours before Rice arrived on her 18th visit in two years aimed at encouraging peace talks formally relaunched at a conference hosted by the US president, George W Bush, in November.
   ‘This is a day of joy for the fighters of freedom and independence,’ said Said al-Attaba, 56, the longest serving Palestinian prisoner who had been behind bars since 1977 for killing an Israeli woman.
   ‘It is like a wedding celebration for the Palestinian
   people, but our joy will not be complete until all Palestinian prisoners are released,’ he said by telephone.
   Those released also included Mohammed Ibrahim Abu
   Ali, known as ‘Abu Ali Yatta,’ who was jailed in 1979 for killing an Israeli settler who was studying at a religious school in the flashpoint West Bank town of Hebron.
   A member of Abbas’s Fatah party, he was elected to parliament in 2006 while behind bars.
   The release of Al-Attaba and Abu Ali was a rare and controversial exception to Israel’s policy of not freeing those who have been implicated in deadly attacks against its citizens.
   ‘This is a big day we have been awaiting for 32 years,’ said Attaba’s sister Sanaa, who along with friends and family has been preparing a hero’s welcome feast for her brother in his West Bank hometown of Nablus.
   The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, proposed the release earlier this month, saying that it would bolster the Western-backed Abbas, whom he has met on a roughly fortnightly basis since the peace talks were formally relaunched.

Pakistan on Monday banned the main Taliban militant group behind a wave of suicide attacks in the country that has killed hundreds of people since last year, the interior ministry said.
   The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — an umbrella group for the Taliban Islamist militants who have threatened more suicide attacks — will have its bank accounts and assets frozen.
   ‘We have banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan because of their involvement in a series of suicide attacks,’ interior ministry chief Rehman Malik said.
   ‘They themselves have claimed responsibility of several suicide attacks and the government cannot engage in a dialogue with such people,’ he said.
   The TTP is headed by Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, based in the lawless South Waziristan tribal district bordering Afghanistan.
   The outfit has been blamed for most of the attacks in which nearly 1,200 people have been killed since July last year.
   The previous government accused Mehsud of orchestrating the gun and suicide attack which killed former premier Benazir Bhutto last December but he denied involvement.
   The Islamic fundamentalist movement has been involved in a wave of suicide attacks targeting security installations to demand an end to an army offensive against militants near the Afghan border.
   It claimed responsibility for the double bombing on the country’s main army munitions factory last Thursday that killed 64 people and wounded 70 others.
   ‘An official order has been issued to freeze all bank accounts and assets of Taliban militants and their organisations,’ state television reported.
   Pakistan on Sunday rejected a ceasefire offered by Taliban militants in the Bajaur tribal region bordering Afghanistan after a two-week military operation left some 500 people dead.
   Bajaur is a known hub of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
   Pakistan’s fractious coalition government, which forced US ally president Pervez Musharraf to resign a week ago, is under intense international pressure to tackle al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
   US and Afghan officials say the rebels use sanctuaries in the rugged tribal border regions to train, regroup and launch attacks on international troops in Afghanistan.

The Thai police are braced for a major anti-government demonstration on Tuesday, with tens of thousands expected to take to the streets and speculation protesters may try to occupy the prime minister’s compound.
   The People’s Alliance for Democracy, a motley group of royalists and pro-military businessmen, is hoping to draw ‘hundreds of thousands’ of people to the protest, although the police say they are expecting up to 35,000.
   A June 20 march on Government House drew about 25,000 people accusing the government of being an illegitimate proxy for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup after a year of PAD protests.
   ‘It will be bigger than before, probably the biggest one, but the street can hold up to 35,000,’ national police spokesman Surapol Thuanthong told reporters on Monday.
   The police would not clash with the demonstrators but would be backed up by fire trucks and ambulances, he said. He did not say how many riot police would be deployed.
   The prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, said in a televised speech he was not threatened by the rally and his cabinet would meet as usual on Tuesday.
   ‘If they break any law, they will be dealt with accordingly,’ Samak said. Reporters from domestic television stations said the PAD had told them to position their cameras and trucks inside the Government House compound, suggesting protesters might try to scale its wrought-iron fence.

Deadly clashes broke out Monday when Sudanese security forces thrust into one of the largest camps for displaced people in Darfur, leaving up to 27 people feared dead, witnesses and rebels said.
   Reports of casualties varied wildly and there was no immediate confirmation of numbers from aid workers or UN officials compiling their own statistics.
   One rebel commander in Darfur said that 27 people had been killed. Aid workers said people on the ground in Kalma camp, outside Darfur’s biggest town of Nyala, had reported more than 20 dead.
   Government security forces massed at dawn outside Kalma, a highly charged camp home to up to 100,000 people made homeless by five years of war in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, witnesses and UN officials said.
   ‘This morning security forces surrounded Kalma camp and demanded that every IDP (internally displaced person) leave,’ Ahmed Abdel Shafie, a commander in the nebulous rebel Sudan Liberation Army, said from elsewhere in Darfur.
   ‘Later, they opened fire on the eastern side of the camp. There were many casualties. Up to now, we have 27 confirmed dead and 75 wounded.’ He accused the government of wanting to disband IDP camps near main towns to isolate victims of the conflict since the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has sought an arrest warrant for the president, Omar al-Beshir.
   Adam Mohamed, a community leader in Kalma, said by telephone that eight IDPs were killed and another 30 were wounded in clashes with the police.
   Another camp resident, Abdelrahman Omar, said police riding in about 20 cars surrounded homes and started searches, sparking clashes with IDPs.
   The police in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state, said a statement would be released later. One local government official denied any intention of ordering aid workers or civilians out of the camp. ‘I know from NGOs working inside Kalma that there is fighting inside the camp but they didn’t give me details,’ Saroor Ahmed Abdallah, head of the Humanitarian Aid Commission in Nyala, said by telephone.
   UN officials confirmed that soldiers from the UN-led peacekeeping operation, known as UNAMID, were en route to try and open a safe corridor in order to evacuate unconfirmed numbers of dead and wounded.

China deported a group of foreign pro-Tibet activists as the Olympics ended, in what a campaign group described Monday as a bid to prevent their plight from blemishing the last day of the Games.
   Eight Americans, one Tibetan-German and one Briton were quietly flown out of Beijing as a world television audience was watching the spectacular Olympic closing ceremony in the Chinese capital.
   ‘Chinese authorities informed us last night that the eight (American) individuals, detained August 20 and 21 respectively, were deported by Chinese authorities,’ a US embassy spokeswoman said.
   The spokeswoman said they were flown out Sunday night aboard an Air China flight to Los Angeles.
   ‘We urge China to take positive steps to address international and domestic concerns about its record on human rights and religious freedoms,’ she said.
   The Tibetan-German, Florian Norbu Gyanatshang, was also deported and arrived in Frankfurt early Monday, according to the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe.
   Meanwhile, the British embassy in Beijing confirmed that the Briton among the 10, Mandy McKeown, had also been released.
   ‘She has been deported. As we speak, she is flying back to Europe,’ an embassy spokesman said.

The Philippines military said Monday that it was gaining ground against Muslim separatists in clashes that have killed more than 100 guerrillas and displaced over a quarter of a million people.
   During the last four days troops have overrun at least 15 ‘communities and camps’
   run by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the southern island of Mindanao, the military said.
   More than 100 MILF fighters have died in fierce running gunbattles with the advancing troops, officers added.
   Military chief General Alexander Yano said that troops on the ground were engaging two units of the MILF under the commands of Umbra Kato and Commander Bravo, blamed for a wave of deadly raids on villages and towns earlier this month.
   Yano said troops had Sunday ‘cleared several MILF communities and camps.’

The Malaysian opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, said Monday he was confident of winning a critical by-election despite claims of a government dirty-tricks campaign to undermine him.
   The opposition has accused the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition of buying votes and stoking racial tensions in an effort to sideline Anwar, who is bidding to return to parliament in a step towards seizing power.
   ‘It shows the level of desperation and abuse of power by the Barisan Nasional,’ Anwar said of the bitter campaign for Tuesday’s vote, and the government’s focus on sodomy charges levelled against him by a young male aide.
   ‘I am confident, God willing, we will win, but we are fighting an entire government machinery which has spent millions of dollars in an attempt to deny me a victory,’ he said.
   The charismatic 61-year-old, who was sacked as deputy premier in 1998 and spent six years in jail on sodomy and corruption charges, said he was still on track to unseat the government by mid-September with the help of defectors.

The Russian parliament voted overwhelmingly on Monday to recognise the independence of two breakaway Georgian regions — while the president, Dmitry Medvedev, linked the Georgia conflict to tensions over another separatist region.
   The European Union, which has criticised Russia’s military intervention, called a special summit on the Georgia crisis. Many European nations expressed concern at the Russian parliament vote to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent.
   With Russian troops still inside Georgia and tensions heightened by the arrival in a Georgian port of a US warship carrying aid, Russia’s two parliament chambers approved a resolution calling on Medvedev formally to recognise the two regions.
   The Duma and Federation Council held special sessions to debate the region’s calls for recognition.
   The two regions are internationally recognised as part of Georgia, where Russian troops rolled in on August 8 to fight off a Georgian offensive to retake South Ossetia.
   Addressing the Federation Council, South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity said Russia had saved his region from ‘genocide.’
   He asserted there was more political and legal legitimacy to recognising South Ossetia’s independence than there had been for Kosovo, the Serbian province which broke free with EU and US backing.
   The Abkhaz separatist leader, Sergei Bagapsh, said: ‘Neither Abkhazia nor South Ossetia will ever again live in one state with Georgia.’
   The parliament appeal was not binding and a final decision on Russian recognition rests with Medvedev.
   The Russian president has signalled his support for independence and on Monday he mentioned the South Ossetia case when he said a dispute with Moldova over the Transdniestr region could be settled.
   ‘It’s reasonable to discuss already today the Transdniestr problem. I see good chances for solving it,’ Medvedev told the Moldovan president, Vladimir Voronin, at a meeting at the Russian leader’s Black Sea coastal residence at Sochi.
   He said Transdniestr, which lies on Moldova’s eastern edge adjoining Ukraine, should be viewed in the context of the battle with Georgia.
   Events in South Ossetia showed ‘how dangerous such so-called frozen conflicts can be, given that the Georgian leadership, as they say, went crazy,’ Medvedev said, quoted by Interfax news agency.
   ‘This is a serious warning for us all. It is in this context that we should view the question of Transdniestr resolution,’ the Russian leader said.
   Transdniestr fought a brief independence war after the Soviet Union’s collapse but is not internationally recognised. It hosts Russian troops and a Soviet-era arms dump.

The US Central Intelligence Agency recruited a family of Swiss engineers to help it thwart the Libyan and Iranian nuclear programmes as well as an underground supply network of Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, The New York Times reported on its web site late Sunday.
   The newspaper said the operation involved Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, who have been accused in Switzerland of
   dealing with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.
   But the case has been hampered by the destruction of relevant documents, which was done, according to Swiss officials, to prevent their falling into terrorist hands.
   But The Times said the real reason for the destruction was pressure from the CIA, which feared that its ties with the Tinners would be exposed.
   Over four years, the CIA paid the Tinners 10 million dollars, some of which was delivered to them in a suitcase stuffed with cash, said the report, citing unnamed officials. In return, said the paper, the engineers delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya’s
   nuclear weapons programme, reveal Iran’s atomic efforts and undo Khan’s nuclear supply network.
   The Tinners also played an important role in a clandestine American operation to funnel sabotaged nuclear equipment to Libya and Iran, according to The Times.
   Friedrich Tinner began working with Khan in the mid-1970s, using his expertise in vacuum technology to help Khan develop atomic centrifuges, the report said.

The Zimbabwe police detained two opposition lawmakers on Monday ahead of the swearing in of parliament, five months after disputed elections, the opposition said.
   Two deputies of the Movement for Democratic Change were detained in the parliament building in what the opposition called a manoeuvre to influence the vote for a speaker for the new assembly.
   ‘It’s clearly a strategy to eliminate our members and reverse our majority in parliament,’ MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisam said.
   He said one lawmaker, Shuah Mudiwa, was ‘literally pulled’ out of the parliament building.
   ‘We have been informed they want to arrest 15 MPs. It’s all about the vote for the speaker. Nothing to do with the law,’ he said.
   ‘This arrogance has the potential of sinking the ship of our negotiations. We don’t need arrogance on the part of any of the parties. We need maturity and harmony and not acrimony,’ Chimasa said.
   The police made no immediate comment.
   Parliament met for the first time since parliamentary and presidential elections in March which led to months of political unrest which has still not been settled.
   The MDC now controls parliament for the first time but MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai claims the president, Robert Mugabe, fixed the result of the presidential election and pulled out of the runoff second round because of allegations of violence against his supporters.
   The MDC attended the swearing in even though Tsvangirai has said it could jeopardise power-sharing talks with Mugabe which were suspended two weeks ago.
   Lawmakers were sworn in groups of 10, with some of the 210 lawmakers having to stand as there was only seating for 145.
   MDC lawmakers sat on the side usually occupied by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, heckling members of the party by shouting: ‘You sit on that side. You are now in the opposition.’
   Neither Mugabe and Tsvangirai, who is not a MP, were present Monday. Mugabe is expected to attend the official opening of parliament on Tuesday.
   Parliamentary and presidential elections were held in March, setting off months of political unrest after Tsvangirai claimed that Mugabe fixed the presidential election result and intimidated his supporters.
   Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party suffered a historic reverse when it won only 97 parliamentary seats.

Kyrgyzstan announced a national day of mourning for Tuesday after 70 people died at the weekend in one of the Central Asian state’s worst air disasters since independence in 1991.
   Russia was to send in air crash experts to the former Soviet state to help examine the flight data recorders for clues as to why the Tehran-bound Boeing 737-200 crashed late on Sunday.
   The Kyrgyz government ruled out an act of terrorism, Interfax news agency reported.
   Survivors said a fireball engulfed the plane when it came down near Bishkek’s main airport at Manas, some 30 km from the Kyrgyz capital.
   One told Kyrgyz state television that a strong blast shook the fuselage shortly after he escaped from the burning wreckage: ‘When my friend ran out, his clothes were ablaze.’
   Photographs from the crash site released by the state news agency Kabar showed the plane’s smoking fuselage and fragments of aircraft strewn over the ground.
   Airport employees who saw the wreckage on Sunday said the tail was the only part of the plane still intact.
   Flags will fly at half mast on public buildings on Tuesday and shows, theatres and cinemas will close for the day as a mark of respect for the dead, after the president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev ordered a day of national mourning.
   The Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, sent his condolences to the tiny Central Asian state after the disaster at Manas, part of which is used by the US military as a base to supply the international force fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
   The cause of the crash remained unclear, although the prime minister, Igor Chudinov, said on Sunday that initial reports suggested the plane had suffered a sudden loss of cabin pressure, causing the pilot to request an emergency landing.
   The aircraft, owned by local private carrier Itek-Air, was chartered by an Iranian company.
   Members of a teenage basketball team were among the dead and officials said many of the victims were so badly burnt that DNA tests would be needed to identify them.
   Only 25 of the estimated 90 people aboard the aircraft, survived –14 of them Kyrgyz nationals and 11 Iranians.
   The US embassy in Kazakhstan denied two US basketball players, in Kyrgyzstan on a coaching trip, had taken the ill-fated flight.

A suicide bomber in an explosive vest killed 25 people at a dinner banquet in western Baghdad’s Sunni Arab Abu Ghraib district on Sunday, the police said.
   The attack, the biggest in weeks, took place at the home of a local sheikh who was holding the feast to celebrate the release of his son from US detention, the police said.
   They said women and children were among the dead, as were some men believed to be members of US-backed neighbourhood patrols.
   The police colonel Dawood Suleiman in the nearby city of Fallujah gave the initial death toll as 21. A police source in Baghdad who declined to give his name later said 25 had died and 32 were injured.
   The Iraqi police said US helicopters had flown in to evacuate the wounded.
   Abu Ghraib is a largely Sunni Arab district located between central Baghdad and Fallujah on the highway heading west from the capital into Anbar province, an area once in the grip of al-Qaeda but now controlled by US-backed tribal groups.
   US and Iraqi authorities say suicide bombings are the signature tactic of al-Qaeda Sunni Arab militants, who frequently target other Sunnis since Sunni tribes turned against them over the past two years.
   Iraq has become far less dangerous over the past year, but militants still retain the capability to conduct large-scaled bombings.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama faces a challenge this week to try to heal a party rift, draw a sharp contrast between himself and Republican rival John McCain and back up his soaring oratory with specifics of what he would do if he wins the White House.
   As Obama, 47, enters the Democratic party convention that will formally nominate him, he has yet to answer doubts among many Americans about where he would take the country if elected in November.
   Democrats are confident the man who would be America’s first black president is in a strong position to defeat Vietnam war hero McCain, who turns 72 next week.
   But recent weeks have exposed Obama’s vulnerabilities and many voters expect him to offer fuller, more detailed plans of what he would do as president, particularly about the troubled economy.
   As he prepares for his acceptance speech on Thursday, Democrats gathering for the convention in Denver are wondering to what extent his vanquished rival, Hillary Clinton, and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, will rally her supporters behind Obama.
   Resentment lingers among Hillary backers three months after Hillary ended her campaign, driven in part by evidence that the Obama camp never seriously considered her as a candidate to be his vice presidential running mate. Obama filled that position with veteran Delaware senator Joe Biden.
   Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, laid out two goals for the convention.
   ‘We want to make sure people know exactly who senator Obama is and where he wants to take the country, and two, that voters know their choice in this election, between Barack Obama, who wants to fundamentally change the way business is done in Washington, and John McCain, who is just more of the same of what we have had over the course of the last eight years,’ he said.
   Democratic strategist Doug Schoen, who worked in the Hillary White House, said Obama ‘needs to change the direction of his campaign’ by tying McCain more closely to the president, George W Bush, unpopular due to the Iraq war and sagging economy.

Michelle Obama says she’s a passionate woman. Passionate about her family, passionate about her politics and passionate about her man.
   And on Monday she’ll take centre stage at the Democratic party convention to tell more than 4,000 delegates in Denver and millions more glued to their televisions at home why her husband, Barack Obama, should be president.
   Her opening night keynote address will raise the curtain on a carefully choreographed four-day jamboree seeking to give Obama a nuclear-fuelled push into the final key stretch of the 2008 presidential campaign.
   But as Obama, 47, bids to be the first African-American elected to the Oval Office, some voters remain wary of his life story and his exotic childhood as the son of a Kenyan father and white Kansas mother who lived for a time in Indonesia.
   It’s a hurdle which his
   campaign has sought to overcome, and which Michelle Obama, 44, will be hoping to set to rights in her prime-time address backed by a strong show of family support from her brother Craig Robinson and her husband’s half-sister Maya Soetero-Ng, who will also speak.
   ‘Barack Obama’s story is an American story that reflects a life of struggle, opportunity and responsibility like those faced by Americans everyday,’ the Democratic party said in a statement announcing that Michelle Obama would headline Monday night’s line-up of speakers.
   ‘The opening night of the convention will highlight Barack’s life story, his scommitment to change, and the voices of Americans who are calling for a new direction for this country.’
   Over the past months Michelle Obama has increasingly shot to the fore in her husband’s bid to recapture the White House from the Republicans and the administration of the president, George W Bush.

The chill left on US-Russian relations by Moscow’s military incursion into Georgia could spell problems for future US access to the International Space Station, US experts said.
   The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will become dependent on flights to the ISS by Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft when it retires the shuttle fleet that has long ferried US astronauts into space in 2010.
   NASA will only get its successor space vehicle, Orion, planned for a revival of trips to the moon, ready for flight in 2015 at the earliest.
   That leaves the needs of US astronauts visiting the ISS vulnerable to the possibility of a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow after Russia’s powerful military overran much of Georgia two weeks ago in the dispute over South Ossetia.
   ‘If recent Russian actions are any indicator, a technical excuse to completely block US access to the ISS for geopolitical reasons would fit nicely into the Kremlin toolkit,’ Vincent Sabathier, an expert on human space exploration at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said.
   Sabathier noted that not only was the short Georgia war a serious thorn in relations, but also the US determination to set up in Poland and the Czech Republic its missile defence system, which Russia calls a threat to its military.
   ‘Almost immediately after the Czech Republic signed an agreement with the US to place missile defence tracking radar in its territory, oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline to the central European country were reduced to a trickle ... ostensibly for technical reasons,’ Sabathier said.