A group of lawmakers, whose support is crucial to the government, threatened to resign on Wednesday if India failed to stop the worsening conflict in Sri Lanka, officials said.
   About 40 MPs, all allies of the ruling Congress party-led coalition, met in Chennai on Wednesday and gave the Indian government two weeks to intervene or face being brought down, the lawmakers said.
   The meeting was chaired by M. Karunanidhi, chief minister of Tamil Nadu and leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, a key ally of the Congress party.
   ‘The decision (to resign) applies to members of both houses of parliament from Tamil Nadu’ Karunanidhi said after the meeting, without specifying the type of intervention they sought.
   Sri Lankan troops stepped up their offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for a separate homeland this year and the government says its forces have killed thousands of the rebels since January.
   India sent peacekeepers to the Island nation in 1987, only to withdraw them after losing more than 1,000 men in battle and facing allegations of human rights violations. India has since said it does not want to get involved in Sri Lankan politics.
   Congress party leaders began voicing concern under pressure from their southern allies in Tamil Nadu, where the mainly Tamil population takes the view that Sri Lankan government troops are wiping out Tamils on the island.
   On Wednesday, prime minister Manmohan Singh said India was concerned at the rising hostilities in Sri Lanka.
   ‘The situation in Sri Lanka does not call for any military victory, it calls for a negotiated political settlement which respects the unity and integrity of Sri Lanka ... (and) the essential human rights of the minorities, particularly the Tamil minority, Singh told a new conference in New Delhi.
   The Tigers have waged war since 1983 to create a homeland for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil people, and in doing so landed on US, EU and Indian terrorism lists for widespread bombings and assassinations of rivals, including Tamils.
   In 1991, they were charged with killing India’s former Congress prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
   

Thailand and Cambodia appeared to take steps to end a border dispute on Thursday, with a Thai general saying the two sides had agreed to conduct joint military patrols.
   There was no immediate comment from the Cambodians, who a day earlier lost two soldiers in the most serious clash between the countries in years.
   After five hours of talks with his Cambodian counterpart, Thai regional commander General Wiboonsak Neeparn said both sides would keep their troops and heavy weapons near the disputed 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple.
   ‘We did not make much progress. Troops on both sides will stay where they are’ he told reporters. The Hindu temple has stirred nationalist passions in both countries for generations, but officials on both sides have toned down their belligerent rhetoric since the fighting on Wednesday.
   ‘Our policy to resolve this conflict is through negotiations’ Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat told reporters in Bangkok.
   Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen has stayed silent, but his foreign minister urged negotiations, saying the incident was between soldiers and ,not an invasion by Thailand.’
   But people on the streets of Phnom Penh were angry.
   ‘We need to defend our land. We must not lose to the Thais’ said security guard Bun Roeun, 36, flicking through newspaper reports of the clashes. ,If the Thais continue their attempt to cross our border, I am ready to join the army to fight back.’
   The confrontation comes amid great political instability and an economic slowdown in Thailand, as protesters in a long-running Bangkok street campaign urge the army to launch a coup against the elected government.
   ‘It’s hard to see how Cambodia gains from starting a war with Thailand at this point’ said Tony Kevin, a former Australian ambassador to Phnom Penh.
   ‘But if you look at the very tense and riven state of Thai politics, it’s easy to see how a Cambodian war could be of interest as a distraction’ he said.
   China and the United States expressed concern over the violence and urged both sides to use restraint.

The international effort in Afghanistan is falling short, US defence secretary Robert Gates warned Wednesday, stressing the need for a better integrated approach to stabilising the country.
   These efforts today, however well-intentioned and even heroic, add up to less than the sum of the parts, said Gates in a speech prepared for delivery to the US Institute for Peace.
   His remarks came amid growing US fears that an upsurge of insurgent violence and corruption in Afghanistan is threatening the viability of an already weak central government.
   ‘To be successful, the entirety of the NATO alliance, the European Union, NGOs, and other groups — the full panoply of military and civilian elements — must better integrate and coordinate with one another and also with the Afghan government’ he said.
   ‘Afghanistan is the test, on the grandest scale, of what we are trying to achieve when it comes to integrating the military and civilian, the public and private, the national and international.’
   But Gates complained that allied nations were unable to provide ,the quantity and types of forces needed for this kind of fighting.’
   NATO forces, meanwhile, are hamstrung by caveats that nations have placed on the use of the military forces that they have provided, he said.
   ‘An enduring requirement is the ability to rapidly train, equip, and advise Afghan security forces, as we are doing to improve the size and quality of Afghanistan’s army and police’, he said.
   ‘Until recently, this capacity did not exist within most Western governments or militaries outside their Special Forces.’
   Gates called for a concerted development strategy that persuades and inspires the public to counter Taliban influence through intimidation.

Malaysia’s government on Wednesday outlawed Hindu rights group Hindraf which held a massive anti-government protest last year against alleged discrimination of minority ethnic Indians.
   Malaysia is holding five leaders of Hindraf or the Hindu Rights Action Force under the harsh Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial, after they led the protest last November. Ethnic Indians make up 7 percent of Malaysia’s 27 million population and, like ethnic Chinese, have expressed growing resentment against decades-old government policies giving majority Muslim-Malays preferential treatment.

European Union leaders adopted on Thursday sweeping new immigration guidelines which have angered rights groups for focussing on skilled workers rather than refugees.
   ‘This pact was adopted unanimously. Europe now has a real immigration policy,’ French president Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters, after hosting an EU summit in Brussels.
   The European Pact on Immigration and Asylum — a document of political intent but not binding laws — sets out principles for managing migration, fighting illegal immigration and forming partnerships with countries people leave or travel through to get to Europe.
   It also seeks to make border controls more effective while building better asylum policy, with refugees increasingly obliged to apply for asylum status from outside the EU. Some 220,000 people made applications last year.
   Immigration will be based on criteria like ‘Europe’s reception capacity in terms of its labour market,’ with the emphasis on controlling would-be immigrants rather than encouraging people to come.
   The pact also insists that nations take the ‘interests’ of their neighbours into account when formulating immigration, integration and asylum policies — shorthand for avoiding the mass handout of residency permits.
   Italy and Spain have angered some of their partners by giving papers to some 700,000 people in recent years.
   ‘This common policy must be founded on proper management of migratory flows, in the interests not only of the host countries but also of the countries of origin and of the migrants themselves,’ the leaders said in a statement. They pledged to make the pact the subject of an annual debate.

Europe’s ambitious plan to tackle climate change was wilting under pressure Thursday with EU leaders set to tailor the final package to take account of national concerns about its economic impact.
   Italy and Poland brandished the threat of a veto if their reservations were not taken into account, while Germany, Europe’s largest economy, also voiced concerns over the environmental plans.
   Although the likes of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have urged leaders to stick to their targets, a draft of a joint declaration due to be delivered at the end of a two-day summit in Brussels indicated they would be trimmed.
   According to the text, the 27 heads of state and government agreed the package should be introduced in a ‘cost-effective manner... having regard to each member state’s specific situation’.
   French president Nicolas Sarkozy has called for ‘some flexibility’ to be shown to accommodate the dissenters.
   But speaking at a press conference at the end of Wednesday’s opening day of the summit in Brussels, Sarkozy was firm on the overall climate change targets and the timetable of seeking agreement by December.
   ‘I will not give up the targets or the calendar for achieving them,’ he said.

Newly reelected Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper will meet other world leaders and put parliament back to work quickly to hammer out ways to weather the credit crisis and keep the country’s economy competitive, he said on Wednesday.
   In the wake of Tuesday’s federal election, which strengthened Harper’s minority government, other opposition leaders said they were ready to work together to tackle the fallout from global economic instability.
   ‘The No 1 job of the prime minister of Canada is to protect this country’s economy, our earnings, our savings, and our jobs, during a time of global economic uncertainty,’ Harper told a news conference in Calgary, Alberta.
    ‘The mandate we received allows us to continue moving forward,’ he added, presenting a six-step plan to ensure Canada remains as unscathed as possible.
   Harper said Ottawa would take ‘whatever steps are necessary to ensure that Canada’s financial system is not put at a competitive disadvantage’ but gave no details.
   He plans to summon Parliament later this autumn and present an economic and fiscal update before the end of November. He will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy and senior European Union officials for talks on the crisis this Friday.
   Rivals frequently accuse Harper of playing partisan politics but he was keen to shoot down suggestions he would be thinking only of his future electoral prospects.
    ‘The last thing I want to talk about today is another election ... I don’t think the people of Canada do either. I think that’s a message that all parliamentarians will understand,’ he said.
    ‘We will always keep all our parliamentary options open but at the same time I would prefer if possible to work with the opposition parties, particularly on the question of the economy.’

Talks to ease the conflict over Georgia’s Moscow-backed breakaway regions were suspended until next month on Wednesday after diplomats failed to get Russia and Georgia to agree on who was allowed to take part.
   The sticking point was whether representatives from South Ossetia and Abkhazia should be allowed to participate and how.
   Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war in August and remain at odds over the two breakaway Georgian provinces that Moscow recognizes as independent states under its protection.
   ‘The Russians and the Georgians were not in a formal meeting at the same time, they weren’t in the same room at the same time,’ U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried told a briefing.