Lawless protests that shuttered Thailand’s airports will be seen by authoritarian regimes in an increasingly undemocratic Southeast Asia as a vindication of their own iron rule, analysts say.
   For eight days, protesters determined to bring down a democratically-elected government blockaded Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi international airport causing massive economic damage, with police unable or unwilling to uproot them.
   They only agreed to leave when a court dissolved the ruling party and forced the Thai prime minister from office in early December, leaving the kingdom scrambling to put together a new coalition government.
    ‘There may be some people who are saying ‘if this is what democracy leads to, then maybe we’re better off without it,’‘ said John Virgoe, Southeast Asia director for global think-tank International Crisis Group.
   Thailand’s reputation as a beacon for democracy in the region was already tarnished after the army removed twice-elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a coup in September 2006 following massive street protests.
   Elections in December 2007 notionally returned the kingdom to democracy, but two prime ministers aligned to Thaksin have been removed by court decisions which critics have labelled ‘disguised coups.’
   Virgoe told AFP that Indonesia’s democracy was flourishing with elections due next year, but said there were few other shining lights in the region.
    ‘Indonesia aside, it is hard to point to anything by way of democracy in Southeast Asia that you could feel particularly encouraged about,’ he said.
    ‘The Philippines is in a perpetual crisis and now Thailand, which always was the bell-wither for democracy in Southeast Asia, has allowed three prime ministers to get kicked aside by court action and action on the streets.’
   Elsewhere in the region, Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962 and keeps pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi locked up.
   The junta has promised elections in 2010, but pro-democracy groups say this is simply a ploy to legitimize their rule.
   Although Cambodia saw another round of successful elections in July, Prime Minister Hun Sen has largely cemented his 23-year iron-fist rule by intimidating and undercutting his rivals.
   Malaysia’s own version of democracy has been sullied by suppression of the media, widespread corruption in politics and business, election-rigging and a lack of faith in the police and judiciary.
   The departure in 2003 of premier Mahathir Mohamad, who ruled for two decades, lifted the lid a little and allowed a measure more freedom, but his successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi failed to make good on his promise of reform.
   Vietnam and its smaller neighbour Laos have been ruled by communist governments since their 1975 victories over US-backed forces that ended the Vietnam War.
   Both have introduced market reforms, but politically they remain authoritarian states with a tight grip on all political activity and the media.

The Red Cross said on Saturday it would help Nepal enhance its forensic skills to examine human remains in a probe into hundreds missing during a civil war which ended two years ago.
   Human rights groups accuse both government troops and the Maoist rebels of abuses such as killings, kidnappings and torture during the decade-long conflict which caused more than 13,000 deaths.
   The Maoist-led coalition is yet to set up a panel to conduct the probe, even though this was agreed to as part of a 2006 peace deal.
   The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said two forensic experts would teach Nepali officials, police and rights activists about exhumation procedures, analysis of human remains and the identification of mortal remains.
    ‘Under international humanitarian law, the authorities bear primary responsibility for determining what happened to people who went missing in connection with armed conflict,’ said Mary Werntz, head of the ICRC in Nepal.
    ‘To provide accurate information they need to be able to draw on considerable forensic expertise.’
   Though estimates on the number of missing vary, the ICRC says it has received complaints about 1,250 people who have not been found.

Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh said on Sunday that relations with Pakistan could only be normalised when it no longer provided safe havens for militant groups.
   Manmohan, speaking at an election rally in disputed Kashmir, stressed India was open to better ties with Pakistan but that improvements depended on Pakistan taking action against groups such as those behind the Mumbai attacks.
   ‘Our desire to normalise relations with our neighbour will not get fulfilled until our neighbour prevents its land from being used for terrorist activities against India,’ he said.
    ‘There are some people in Pakistan who are always ready to carry out such attacks against our country.’
   Manmohan was speaking in Indian Kashmir, where ongoing state elections are being boycotted by separatist politicians and rebels who argue that voting strengthens New Delhi’s hold over the Muslim-majority region.
   India has provided no proof that the surviving gunman involved in the deadly attacks in Mumbai, or any of his nine slain colleagues, were Pakistanis, Pakistan’s foreign minister said in Paris on Saturday.
   ‘We’re not denying it, we’re not accepting it,’ Shah Mohammed Qureshi told reporters during a trip to Paris. ‘If you (India) have any evidence, share this evidence with us.’
   Indian police said Saturday that the surviving gunman had written to the Pakistan High Commission in India seeking legal help.
   The gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman, has also asked Pakistani officials to take custody of the body of another gunman who was killed in a gunfight.
   Iman faces a string of charges including ‘making war against the country, murder, attempted murder and other charges under the arms and explosives act.’
   India says all 10 attackers came from Pakistan and has stepped up pressure on its neighbour to crack down on Islamic militants after the attacks last month that left 172 people dead, including nine gunmen.
   But Pakistan has repeatedly said there is still no proof that this is the case.

British prime minister Gordon Brown pledged Sunday to help Pakistan tackle terrorism on its soil after meeting President Asif Ali Zardari to discuss security in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
   Brown said Britain would work with the government in Islamabad to ensure terrorists were denied safe havens in Pakistan, and pledged 6 million pounds (9 million dollars) to help it tackle militancy.
    ‘Through these measures we hope to do more to break the chain of terror that links the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of the UK and other countries around the world,’ Brown said during a press conference with Zardari.
   Brown was in Islamabad after visiting India and Afghanistan on a tour of the region to discuss security in the wake of the devastating Mumbai attacks, which New Delhi has blamed on ‘elements’ in Pakistan.
   He said Pakistan and Britain must work together to ‘do everything in our power to cut off terrorism,’ claiming that three-quarters of the most serious terrorist plots investigated by the British authorities had links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
   But he also stressed that Pakistan was itself a victim of terrorism, having suffered 50 suicide attacks this year alone.
    ‘I think it’s right that we have to help Pakistan to root out terrorism in its own country... all of us suffer when terrorists are active and are able to impose their will,’ he said.
   At least one British national died in last month’s attacks on India’s financial centre, and Brown said he had asked Zardari to allow British police to question Pakistani suspects if they wanted to do so.
    ‘I asked (Indian Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh this morning if he would allow the British police, if they chose to so do, to interview the person arrested as one of the suspects... I have similarly asked President Zardari,’ he said.
    ‘We all have an interest in discovering what lies behind the Mumbai outrages.’
   Pakistan has arrested a number of suspected militants in the wake of the attacks, including two leaders of the banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba, while the lone surviving gunman, a Pakistani national, is being held in India.
   Brown’s visit here came hours after Islamabad said India had twice violated Pakistani air space on Saturday, drawing a swift denial from New Delhi.
   Pakistan said Indian jets had flown over the Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir and the eastern city of Lahore, where the banned militant group India accuses of involvement in the Mumbai attacks is active.
   But Zardari sought Sunday to downplay the incident, saying the Indian fighter jets only ‘slightly entered Pakistani soil.’
   Relations between India and Pakistan have plummeted in the wake of the devastating Mumbai assault. Gunmen ran riot in the city, killing 163 people during a 60-hour siege.

British prime minister Gordon Brown condemned the Taliban on Saturday for using a child suicide bomber in an attack which killed three British troops.
   Military and government sources said Britain has reinforced its 8,100 forces in Afghanistan with about 300 troops to press a campaign against the Taliban in the area around Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of southern Helmand province.
   British forces took heavy casualties in Helmand on Friday, when four troops were killed, one by a roadside bomb and three by a young suicide bomber.
   ‘It is a terrible commentary on the Taliban that they should use a 13-year-old child as a suicide bomber to kill some of our British troops,’ an emotional Brown told scores of British soldiers gathered around him at their Camp Bastion base.
   ‘We have been through difficult times as a result of a change of tactics by the Taliban,’ Brown said, referring to increased Taliban violence that has raised concern in Europe.
   Brown thanked the soldiers for their courage, saying there was a chain of terror that ran from the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border ‘and could end up in the cities and towns of Britain’.
   Brown was then flown by helicopter to visit an observation tower near the town of Musa Qala which overlooks Taliban territory. He then spoke to British soldiers there from a Gurkha regiment and local officials, including a chief of police who was a Taliban member until year ago.
   British soldiers said it was the closest a British prime minister had got to the frontline in Afghanistan. Brown then flew to the Afghan capital, Kabul, for talks with President Hamid Karzai.
   British government and military sources said 300 extra troops had been drafted into Helmand from Cyprus.

The banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for Mumbai attacks that killed 179 people, vowed on Saturday to fight India’s ‘illegal occupation’ of Kashmir but said it has no links to the Pakistan government.
   Indian media reported the same day that the lone surviving gunman from last month’s attacks asked Pakistan for legal help, after lawyers in India’s financial hub refused to take on his case citing moral and ethical concerns.
   Under pressure from India and the United States, Pakistan has cracked down on Lashkar and an Islamic charity regarded as a Lashkar front, following the attack by Islamist gunmen in late November on luxury hotels and other targets.
   Islamabad has said it would abide by a recent UN decision placing Hafiz Saeed, Lashkar’s founder, on a terrorism sanctions list of people and organizations linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
   Islamabad also has said it was investigating links with the attack, but maintains India has not provided any evidence.
   The Pakistan-based Lashkar has denied being behind the three-day rampage at some of Mumbai’s most famous landmarks, and said it condemned them.
    ‘Lashkar-e-Taiba has no link or relation with the Taliban or al Qaeda but we are fighting India’s illegal occupation of Kashmir,’ Abdullah Ghaznavi, a spokesman for Lashkar, told Reuters by telephone.
   ‘Our struggle will continue until Kashmir gains freedom.’
   Indian Kashmir, the focus of two wars between India and Pakistan, has been riven by a separatist revolt against Indian rule since 1989 in which tens of thousands have died, and which has been backed by Pakistan-based militants.
   The lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, wrote a letter to the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi admitting his role and asking for legal help as a Pakistani national, Indian media reported.
   Islamabad has said it was investigating links with the attack, but maintains India has not provided any evidence.
   The United States has kept up diplomatic pressure to prevent Pakistani-Indian relations from worsening and keep Islamabad focused on the war on terrorism. Pakistan has responded by rounding up some of the 40 people India wants to be extradited.

Indian authorities Sunday deployed thousands of troops in Kashmir to prevent demonstrations by Muslim separatists as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited to the region.
   Manmohan was scheduled to campaign for Congress candidates across the insurgency-hit region, where staggered seven-stage state elections are due to end December 24.
   ‘We are restricting civilian movement to maintain law and order,’ police officer Pervez Ahmed said.
   Manmohan was due to address an election rally in the southern district of Anantnag.
   Separatists have called for a total strike and protests against Singh’s visit, which comes a day after police shot dead a 20-year-old student during an anti-election protest in Pulwama district

Three Canadian troops were killed in Afghanistan Saturday, bringing to 103 Canada’s death toll since it its military mission began there in 2002, the Defence Ministry said.
   The three soldiers were killed and another was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their armoured vehicle while on patrol in the Arghandab district of southern Kandahar province, a ministry statement said.
   The deaths bring the number of Canadian service members killed in war-torn Afghanistan to 103 since Ottawa deployed forces there in 2002.
   One Canadian diplomat and two humanitarian workers have also been killed in Afghanistan.
   Three other Canadian soldiers were also killed in Arghandab by a roadside bomb on December 5.
   Canada has a 2,750-strong force in southern Afghanistan.
   Canada on Thursday said its mission in Afghanistan would last until 2011, after US secretary of defence Robert Gates suggested during a visit to Kandahar that he would welcome an extension from Ottawa.
   But Canada’s Parliament ‘has decided that our mission there ends in 2011,’ said Dan Dugas, spokesman for Canadian defence minister Peter MacKay.

India is to station a naval surveillance aircraft in the Gulf of Aden to boost its anti-piracy efforts in the region, a newspaper report on Sunday quoted a military officer as saying.
   The plans come after an Indian warship on patrol in the region captured 23 Somali and Yemeni pirates trying to hijack an Ethiopian flag-bearing merchant vessel.
   ‘Our plan is to base a maritime reconnaissance aircraft at Djibouti,’ the Times of India quoted the unnamed senior naval officer as saying.
   There was no immediate official confirmation of the report.
   The navy said on Saturday its warship Mysore had dispatched helicopter-borne commandos to help the MV Gibe, which had sent a distress call as it came under fire from two pirate boats.
   The commandos captured 23 pirates and recovered a large cache of arms including assault rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher along with loaded magazines, cartridges and grenades, a navy statement said.
   New Delhi first deployed warships in the Gulf of Aden, one of the busiest but most pirate-infested shipping lanes in the world, in October after a merchant vessel with Indian crew was taken hostage by pirates.

sraeli and Egyptian officials were due to hold talks in Cairo on Sunday on efforts to renew a ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip which expires this week.
   Top Israeli defence ministry official Amos Gilad was in Cairo to meet Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman on the truce, which was hammered out in June through Egyptian mediation.
   An Israeli defence official had told AFP on Saturday that the government was prepared to renew the truce with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group which seized power in Gaza last year after violently routing its Fatah rivals.
    ‘If Hamas is ready to maintain the calm and return to the situation as it was three weeks ago, Israel will be willing to continue the truce,’ the official said on condition of anonymity.
   The ceasefire agreement has been rattled since November 4 by a string of tit-for-tat attacks between the Israeli army and militants, who have fired dozens of rockets against southern Israel.
   Talks about renewing the ceasefire come a week after Israel’s interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had told security chiefs to make plans for military action against Gaza militants.

George W Bush’s last hurrah in the global climate arena has met with a welling of disdain contrasting with the outsized expectations for his successor, Barack Obama.
   At the UN climate talks in Poznan, no farewell tears were shed for Bush, whose rejection of the landmark Kyoto Protocol in 2001 almost destroyed multilateral efforts to roll back global warming.
   ‘I don’t know how to put this,’ top climate economist Nicholas Stern said mischievously at a dinner for businessmen and environmentalists, where he commented on Obama’s election.
   ‘Relative to his prehistoric predecessor, it is something which we should celebrate,’ he said, provoking loud cheers as he raised a wine glass to make a toast.
   ‘Goodbye, George!’, he called out, amid cries of ‘Hear! Hear!’
   South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk sighed at the legacy of Bush’s two terms.
    ‘It was a very difficult eight years. It was a disaster for climate change,’ he told AFP.
   Even Ban Ki-moon, the ever-diplomatic UN chief, offered a veiled reproach when asked to comment on the performance of US federal climate policies.
    ‘They should have done more proactively, by joining the Kyoto Protocol,’ he said.
   Tim Wirth, a former Democratic US senator who led climate negotiations under Bill Clinton, struggled to muster a few kind words for the outgoing US negotiators in Poznan.
    ‘There is no need to beat up on them, they did do a few things right on climate,’ he said, then paused: ‘But not very many.’
   Democrats from the current US Congress, in Poznan to get a head start before Obama takes office on January 20, did not mince words on the outgoing team.

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich met with a renowned Chicago criminal lawyer Saturday as he weighed his legal options on how to fight a scandal that has left his career in tatters and disrupted president-elect Barack Obama’s White House transition.
   The Democratic governor had a four-hour meeting with Ed Genson in the lawyer’s downtown office Saturday. Genson has defended newspaper baron Conrad Black, R&B singer R Kelly and numerous public figures on corruption charges, earning a reputation as the lawyer big shots call when they get in a bind in Chicago.
   Genson confirmed the two met but wouldn’t discuss details of their dialogue. When asked if he would take the case, Genson said: ‘We’ll make our mutual decision on Monday.’
   Blagojevich had brushed back calls for his resignation after he was charged with trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat. He sought to project a business-as-usual image amid the turmoil, going to work every day and handling state business.
   As the legal manoeuvring intensified, some observers speculated that he might be trying to leverage the governorship to his advantage in his criminal case — just like prosecutors said he did with the Senate seat for financial gain.
   ‘I would be saying, ‘Let me see what I can get in exchange for you resigning. Don’t just give it up for nothing. Let me see if I can get you a better deal,’ said Steve Cron, a defence lawyer from Santa Monica, Calif.
   Others suggested his lingering refusal to resign is more rooted in his ego than anything else. The governor has been known to love being in the spotlight, whether the attention is good or bad.

Three Russian warships moored off Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast Saturday, in a visit which has sparked heated debate in a country divided by disputed elections.
   Leftist President Daniel Ortega claims he is authorized to approve the visit, but opposition lawmakers say the currently-paralyzed congress needs to approve visits by foreign military forces.
    ‘We don’t want to violate Nicaragua’s laws. We only came on a friendship and humanitarian mission,’ Russian ambassador Igor Kondrashev told local media after the ships, led by destroyer Admiral Chabanenko, moored off Nicaragua’s coast.
   The ships carried computers, electric generators, medicines and other donations for the impoverished Central American country and were due to stay until Monday, the diplomat said.
   Reports said Ortega was due to visit the ships on Saturday.
   Nicaragua’s congress was closed down on November 24 after the opposition proposed a bill to annul contested November 9 mayoral elections over fraud allegations.
   Last week the Admiral Chabanenko became the first Russian warship to use the Panama Canal since 1944, after participating in joint exercises with the Venezuelan navy.
   The manoeuvres in the Caribbean — a region traditionally seen as the US backyard — have been seen as a rebuke for Washington’s decision to deploy an anti-missile defence ‘shield’ in eastern Europe and to send warships carrying aid to Georgia during that country’s war with Russia in August.
   After the war Nicaragua became the only country besides Russia to recognize the independence of the rebel Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

By clinching European agreement on climate change and an economic stimulus plan, French President Nicolas Sarkozy can hail success as he wraps up a six-month EU presidency marked by a series of crises.
   Indeed, Sarkozy has capitalised on such dramatic events as the Russia-Georgia conflict and the financial meltdown to prod change into European institutions he has belittled as rigid.
   As he wrapped up his last summit in Brussels Friday with the twin climate and finance accords, the French president was also the first to recognise his achievements, calling the climate change pact agreed to by the 27-member bloc ‘historic.’
    ‘We are starting to change the way we do things in Europe — talking less and doing more,’ Sarkozy told reporters.
    ‘The image of Europe today is stronger than it was at the beginning of the French presidency. Events helped us.’
   Events did not appear promising in July when France took over the helm of the EU. Irish voters recently had rejected the Lisbon Treaty, throwing efforts to reform and streamline the bloc into disarray.

Zimbabwe has published a draft constitutional law to create a unity government but the opposition MDC on Sunday vowed to block the proposed changes until its demands for equitable power-sharing are met.
   President Robert Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed to form a unity government in September, but the deal has stalled over disagreements on control of key ministries.
   The state-run Sunday Mail reported that the constitutional amendment bill — creating the office of prime minister for Tsvangirai —had been published on Saturday. The MDC immediately rejected the move, saying it was not consulted.
   ‘This was done unilaterally by (the ruling party) ZANU-PF,’ MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told Reuters.

Piracy in the Gulf of Aden will only be defeated by a strong government in Somalia, the commander of the French naval operation in the Indian Ocean said on Sunday.
   ‘We will not end this phenomenon unless we have a Somali government that has the means to act on its territory to fight piracy,’ Vice-Admiral Gerard Valin said on the sidelines of a regional security conference in the Bahraini capital.
   Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Sunday announced he had sacked prime minister Nur Hassan Hussein and his government, in the latest development in their power struggle.
   Valin also hailed the European Union naval mission in the Gulf of Aden as a major step in battling the surge in attacks and hijackings by ransom-hunting Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, a crucial maritime trade route.
    ‘It is really a leap forward, since this is the first time that a coalition has been formed with the mission of fighting piracy,’ he told AFP.
   The EU mission Atalante, a coalition that groups eight EU countries, began operations off the coast of Somalia on December 8 to try to stem the growing piracy, including the hijacking of a Saudi super tanker last month.

Kseniya Sukhinova from Russia was crowned Miss World 2008 after beating 108 other international beauties in a glittering African extravaganza held in South Africa on Saturday.
   ‘And Miss World 2008 is Russia,’ announced Julia Morley, head of the Miss World committee that organises the event.
   The second runner up was Gabrielle Walcott of Trinidad and Tobago and the first runner up Parvathay Omanakuttan of India.
   The 21-year-old blue-eyed blonde beauty, who declared shortly before her win was announced that being nervous made her ‘feel stronger,’ takes over from Zhang Zi Lin of China to become the 58th Miss World.