Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers on Saturday accused the government of planning a genocidal campaign against Tamils as UN agencies began pulling out of the rebel-held Wanni regions in the island’s north.
   UN agencies began pulling out of the region on Friday after Colombo said it could not guarantee the safety of aid workers as troops pushed towards the Wanni region, which comprises Kilinochchi and Mullattivu districts.
   People in Kilinochchi have protested the departure of UN agencies from the Wanni region, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam said in statement through its peace secretariat.
   Sri Lanka has told thousands of people living in its capital ‘without any valid reason’ to return to their villages, calling them a national security threat, a state-run newspaper said Saturday.
   The defence secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, told the Daily News that thousands arrive in Colombo each month from other parts of the war-torn nation, many of them ethnic Tamils fleeing fighting in the north.
   ‘I prefer most of these people who had come from other areas to Colombo and suburbs and who are staying here without any valid reason to go back to their areas,’ Rajapakse was quoted in the state-run Daily News.
   ‘It is an immense problem for the security forces to provide security. The LTTE mingles with these people to infiltrate these areas,’ he said.
   Colombo came under intense pressure from international human rights activists in June last year, when hundreds of Tamils were evicted from the city and told to return to their villages, some in conflict areas.
   They were later bussed back to the city after the Supreme Court intervened and rapped the government.
   Residents had gathered outside the offices of the UN Refugee Agency and the World Food Programme from early Friday, said the rebels, who are fighting for autonomy in the island’s north and east since 1972.
   They were ‘demanding that the agencies should stay behind and continue their humanitarian work for the Wanni people facing a humanitarian crisis,’ the rebels said of the protesting residents.
   While protesters tried to block traffic to prevent UN vehicles from leaving the area, resident representatives had discussions with the two agencies, which had promised to raise the issue at the UN, the release said.
   ‘The appeals (from resident representatives) mostly said that the Sri Lankan government is ordering the international agencies out as it readies for the final stage of the genocide of the Tamils,’ the rebels said.
   UN agencies say at least 160,000 people have been displaced in the past few months in the districts of Mullaittivu and Kilinochchi. Some 70,000 people have fled due to fighting in the past two months alone.
   According to the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, 11 UN and other agencies have been working in the rebel-held Wanni area.
   Colombo wants to avoid troops being accused of killing aid workers in a repeat of the August 2006 massacre of 17 local employees of the French aid agency Action Against Hunger in the east of the island.

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on Saturday led demands for the government to end a crackdown that saw the arrests of an opposition politician, a blogger and a journalist.
   The arrests on Friday under tough internal security laws raised fears that the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition will launch a widespread campaign against dissent as it faces an opposition bid to seize power within days.
   Rights groups have condemned the use of the Internal Security Act, which allows for indefinite detention without trial, and the United States summoned Malaysia’s top envoy in Washington in protest.
   Anwar, who is trying to sign up enough defecting lawmakers to topple the government, said it was running scared after March general elections that handed his opposition alliance unprecedented gains.
   ‘Instead of pursuing a reform agenda it has chosen to burn the country to save itself and to maintain its odious grip on power,’ he said in a statement.
   The three arrested have been accused of inciting ethnic tensions in the multicultural country, but Anwar accused the government of stirring up a phony racial crisis in order to deflect attention from its own problems.
   ‘We ask the government
   how far it is willing to go to usurp justice and destroy the institutions of good governance in its attempt to drive the Malaysian people against each other?’
   The home minister, Syed Hamid Albar, denied the arrests were aimed at suppressing dissent and said the police had moved to secure public order as tensions rose and people started to hoard food.
   ‘This country is multiracial and their relations can be fragile,’ he told a press conference. ‘If the police feel public order is under threat or possible conflict could occur in the country, they will take preventive action.’

Pakistan is backing off suggestions it might confront US troops making raids into its territory in search of Islamic militants, saying Saturday it will deal diplomatically with Washington over the stepped-up tactics.
   Although officials are still unhappy over a recent surge in attacks aimed at Taliban and al-Qaeda havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas near the Afghan border, they also seem to realise there’s not much they can do other than try to convince the US that the strategy is counterproductive because it is generating sympathy for the militants and public anger against both governments due to civilian casualties.
   President Bush secretly approved more aggressive cross-border operations in July, current and former American officials have told The Associated Press.
   Since August 13 there have been at least seven reported missile strikes as well as a raid by helicopter-borne US commandos that Pakistani officials claim killed 15 civilians in tribally governed territory where the government has little control. The frontier region is considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.
   Opposition lawmakers raised the prospect Friday of Pakistan pulling out of the war on terror if the US refuses to respect its borders. The government and military have issued stiff protests to Washington over the recent rash of cross-border strikes, although the criticism appeared to be mostly rhetoric aimed at soothing domestic anger.
   Robert Hathaway, director of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, said the US has to be careful not to dismiss the help it is getting from Pakistan.
   He called the raid by ground forces a ‘risky manoeuvre’ and said that ‘too many of these operations will make the Pakistani army less willing to work with us,’ which could negatively affect future US leadership.
   Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has vowed to protect the country’s sovereignty ‘at all cost.’

Nepal’s new Maoist prime minister, Prachanda, arrives in New Delhi on Sunday seeking to allay fears that Kathmandu would now move closer to China, dumping its traditional friendship with India.
   Such doubts gained ground in New Delhi after Prachanda travelled to China last month for the Olympics closing ceremony, departing from a tradition which has seen incoming Nepali leaders make New Delhi their first foreign port of call.
   There is little doubt that ignoring India is almost impossible for Kathmandu: India is landlocked Nepal’s major economic as well as trade partner, and supplies the bulk of essential goods. It is also Nepal’s sole supplier of fuel.
   ‘Whatever ties it seeks with China, India is their lifeline and they would want it to remain that way,’ Indian analyst Bharat Karnad said in New Delhi.
   ‘He definitely wants a normal friendly relationship with India.’
   Experts say New Delhi would be keen to find out from Prachanda how he planned to take bilateral relations forward after the Maoists made anti-India rhetoric an integral part of their decade-long insurgency that ended in 2006.
   The huge trade imbalance in favour of India riles Nepal, and the Maoists also seek the scrapping of a 1950 bilateral treaty defining travel, business, social and economic ties, saying it shortchanged the Himalayan nation.
   ‘Whether the treaty is to be modified, revised or reviewed and what provisions need to be changed is not clear yet,’ a senior government official, who asked not to be named, said.
   Bilateral trade now exceeds $2.3 billion and is still growing. But Kathmandu is unhappy that the trade deficit rose to $1.1 billion in the financial year up
   to mid-July 2007 from $977 million in the same period the previous year.
   ‘Having such a huge deficit with one country is a very difficult situation for our economy,’ said Krishna Raj Bajgain, a senior official of the state-run Trade and Export Promotion Centre. ‘We can’t afford it and must try and bridge.’

A small group of senior Democratic lawmakers have cautioned against rushing with an expedited vote on the Indo-US nuclear deal in the US Congress that could unsettle administration plans for a quick approval of the pact before the end of the session this month end.
   A three-person group led by Massachussetts Congressman Edward Markey has said that there were many lingering questions about the deal that require further examination and hence Congress should rule out any rush for an expedited vote for its ratification.
   The group’s demand has come in the wake of reports that the 30-day rule for the legislation to be considered will be waived to meet the September 26 deadline when the present session on the Congress is ending.
   Interestingly, house speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat herself, had Friday expressed the hope that the mandatory period may be waived.

Top officials from Thailand’s ruling party will meet Monday to pick a nominee to be the next prime minister after Samak Sundaravej’s bid to return was snuffed out, a candidate said Saturday.
   Sompong Amornviwat, deputy leader of the People Power Party and apparent favourite for the post, confirmed the meeting Monday will choose one candidate, and hope that name is acceptable to its ruling coalition partners.
   ‘The name will be finalised Monday at the party executive meeting, and after that the party will inform its five coalition members and have a joint press conference on Tuesday,’ Sompong said.
   The nomination will then go before parliament on Wednesday to be officially voted in.
   Lawmakers from the coalition failed to show up to re-elect Samak during an emergency session of parliament Friday, three days after a court stripped him of office for hosting TV cooking shows.

India on Saturday carried out a successful test of a homemade air-to-air missile designed for its air force, defence sources said.
   The Astra — Hindi for weapon — was fired from India’s Integrated Testing Range at Chandipur-on-Sea, some 200 kilometres northeast of Orissa’s state capital Bhubaneswar.
   The single-stage solid-fuel missile can carry a 15 kilogramme conventional warhead.
   ‘Astra belongs to the beyond-visual range class of missiles capable of ducking radar eyes and attacking enemy targets up to 80 kilometres,’ a defence official said.

Almost 100 people fled their homes in the southern Philippines as troops clashed with Muslim separatist rebels, witnesses and the military said Saturday.
   The clashes occurred Saturday close to a makeshift centre for displaced people on the southern island of Mindanao where US military advisers had visited just an hour earlier.
   US forces are in the southern Philippines training local forces to hunt local Muslim extremists linked to the al-Qaeda terror network, although the law bars them from taking part in actual combat.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, faced growing pressure from his Labour party Saturday after MPs called for a leadership election and six ex-ministers appealed for a ‘new narrative’.
   Joan Ryan, a former minister, urged a ‘multiplicity’ of senior party figures to stand against Brown.
   She is among a number of normally loyal members of parliament who are urging the party to spark a leadership contest ahead of Labour’s annual conference which begins in Manchester next weekend.
   Within hours, another senior MP, George Howarth, said he had written to the party asking for a leadership contest.
   Six former ministers were among 12 backbench Labour MPs who signed a magazine article urging Brown to find a fresh approach or risk a ‘hammer blow’ at the next general election, which must take place by 2012.
   Labour have suffered a series of defeats in by-elections in the 15 months since Brown succeeded Tony Blair without facing a challenge, and a clutch of policy launches over the past two weeks have failed to seize back the initiative from the main opposition Conservatives.
   But just when Brown appeared to have weathered months of disquiet, government whip Siobhain McDonagh set the ball rolling again on Friday, becoming the first government figure to demand Brown face a challenge.
   McDonagh, whose job was to enforce party discipline in parliament, said Labour needed to ‘clear the air’ over its leadership and direction following months of infighting. She was promptly sacked.
   Under Labour rules, 70 MPs would have to nominate a challenger to Brown to force a leadership challenge.
   The group of six former ministers, including ex-health secretary Patricia Hewitt, suggested Brown, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, for Blair’s 10-year premiership, had lost voters’ trust.
   ‘Labour needs to provide a convincing new narrative if left-of-centre politics are to remain the driving force in Britain,’ they wrote in Progress magazine.
   The party’s most urgent task was to ‘renew confidence in our economic competence’ as it had ‘no explanation yet as to how we are going to steer the economy through the troubled waters ahead.’
   They urged Brown to come up with a clearer message about how to tackle voters’ concerns like household bills and mortgages.

Russian troops pulled out of five key encampments in western Georgia on Saturday and headed for the rebel region of Abkhazia in line with an EU-brokered peace deal.
   Russian army columns left camps near the strategic port of Poti and around the western town of Senaki, leaving behind the earth embankments and trenches they had dug, an AFP reporter witnessed.
   ‘I can confirm that the five Russian checkpoints on the Poti-Senaki line have been removed. The Russian troops are heading towards Abkhazia,’ Georgian interior ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said.
   The withdrawal was also confirmed on the Russian side.
   Dozens of Russian soldiers had been monitoring marine traffic in and out of Poti, a flashpoint in last month’s armed conflict and the headquarters of Georgia’s small navy.
   Located about 30 kilometres southeast of Abkhazia, Poti has been a point of tension as Russia sank several Georgian naval vessels there last month.
   The United States angered Russia earlier this month be sending the flagship of the US Sixth Fleet there to deliver aid to Georgia and show support for Washington’s pro-Western ally. Moscow accused the US of covertly re-arming Tbilisi under the guise of delivering humanitarian aid.
   Saturday’s troop movements were part of a wider plan brokered by the European Union on September 8 that should see Russia withdraw forces from all undisputed Georgian territory, apart from the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
   The pull-out plan agreed by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, foresees Russian troops leaving the five posts in western Georgia by Monday while the rest of the Russian troops are to leave the undisputed areas by mid-October.
   That pull-out is conditional on the deployment of at least 200 European Union military observers by October 1, something that is still a point of controversy.
   While Russia sees the EU observers as monitoring areas around Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the EU has said they should have the right to enter the two rebel territories.
   Russia recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent on August 28, drawing a hail of Western protest.
   Last month’s conflict erupted with a Georgian attempt on August 7 to push back South Ossetian and Russian forces in the rebel territory, prompting a Russian push deep into Georgia and Russian bombing of key sites.
   Meanwhile, a Georgian policeman was fatally shot on Saturday by fire from an Abkhaz-controlled checkpoint on the border of the Abkhazia rebel region, an interior ministry spokesman said.
   ‘He just died.... The fire came from the direction of an Abkhaz checkpoint’ located close to a Georgian checkpoint at Ganmukhuri, said the spokesman, Shota Utiashvili.

Bolivia’s government and a main opposition rival emerged from marathon talks on Saturday voicing hope for reconciliation, after a wave of political violence killed 15 people and prompted martial law.
   Leftist president Evo Morales called the talks to try to defuse a bitter power struggle with opposition regional governors who are vehemently opposed to his socialist reforms and want a bigger share of energy resources for their regions.
   The governor of natural gas-rich Tarija province, Mario Cossio, held talks at the presidential palace with the country’s vice president into the early hours. He said he was representing three other rebel governors who rejected talks.
   ‘We have fulfilled the objective of opening talks, and let’s hope that in the coming hours this turns into a sustained process of dialogue which results in a pact to resolve problems in the framework of national reconciliation,’ Cossio told reporters afterwards.
   Fabian Yacsik, vice minister for decentralisation, said the nearly eight-hour talks had touched on a host of divisive issues, from distribution of royalties from natural resources to the new pro-indigenous constitution that Morales is pushing and right-wing opposition governors abhor.
   ‘What we have done at this meeting is to lay the foundation to start dialogue and have coincided on several points, and identified the base on which to re-establish peace in the country,’ Yacsik said.
   Cossio must now brief fellow opposition governors who refused to attend.
   Anti-government protesters continued to block roads in eastern areas on Friday, causing fuel and food shortages in the opposition-led city of Santa Cruz.

A pilot has successfully landed an aircraft in Antarctica using night-vision goggles, a feat hailed Saturday as historic and could lead to year-round flights to the frozen continent.
   The pilot of the US Air Force Globemaster flew from Christchurch in New Zealand to the US Antarctica base at McMurdo Sound overnight Thursday in the first such mission described as risky.
   The pioneering flight opens up the possibility of safe landings during the long, dark, polar winter when the sun disappears for months.
   Scientists could be dropped off or picked up at any time of the year if such flights went ahead and medical evacuations could become feasible in winter.
   Lieutenant Colonel Jim McGann, the commander of the New Zealand-based Operation Deep Freeze, described the mission as ‘dangerous stuff’.
   He said the risk was high, but the aircraft’s lights reflected well off traffic cones on the runway, allowing it to get down without electric runway lights that are hard to maintain in the intense cold.
   ‘The goggles were fantastic, the outline and runway were perfectly clear and we could see it from three miles and rolled right in. A picture perfect landing,’ he told Television New Zealand.
   Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson said the night-time touchdown opened the way for a greater level of research throughout the year as well as ensuring winter medical evacuations could be carried out.
   ‘This was an historic event. It will certainly bring a measure of reassurance to those at McMurdo and (New Zealand’s) Scott Base over the winter.’
   Bryan Storey, a professor of Antarctic Studies at Canterbury University, told The Press newspaper that the middle of winter and early spring could now be studied by scientists specially flown in at those times.

Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin Friday picked at the scars of the Democratic primary fight, saying Barack Obama must now be sorry he did not name Hillary Clinton as his running mate.
   The Alaska governor, who is trying to enlist women voters to John McCain’s Republican ticket, is tilting at history by vying to become America’s first female vice president.
   ‘I think he’s regretting not picking her now, I do. What determination and grit and even grace through some tough shots that were fired her way — she handled those well,’ Palin told ABC News.
   Palin’s comments came after polls in battleground states Ohio and Pennsylvania found that she was winning growing support among the crucial demographic of white women voters.
   But the Obama campaign pounced on video footage of Palin in March, when she said Clinton’s ‘perceived whine’ during the primary campaign ‘doesn’t do us any good — women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country.’
   ‘Sarah Palin should spare us the phony sentiment and respect,’ Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who vocally backed Hillary during the primaries, said in an Obama campaign statement.
   ‘Governor Palin accused senator Clinton of whining and John McCain laughed when a questioner referred to her by using a demeaning expletive,’ she said.
   That referred to an exchange with a middle-aged female voter who asked McCain, last November, ‘how do we beat the bitch (Clinton)?’
   McCain erupted in laughter and responded: ‘That’s an excellent question!’
   ‘John McCain and Sarah Palin represent no meaningful change, just the same failed policies and same divisive, demeaning politics that has devastated the middle class,’ Wasserman Schultz said.
   Hillary has so far not overtly attacked Palin on the campaign trail, but will venture out to stump for Obama in the key state of Ohio this weekend.
   When McCain sent shockwaves through the political establishment by picking Palin two weeks ago, Clinton issued a statement congratulating her on her ‘historic’ nomination.
   ‘While their policies would take America in the wrong direction, governor Palin will add an important new voice to the debate,’ Hillary said.
   Later, at the end of the Republican convention, the former first lady issued a new statement amending her one-liner condemning McCain at the Democratic convention.

Insurgents set off two bomb attacks in Iraq on Saturday, killing 10 people, most of them members of security forces, officials said.
   A roadside bomb attack targeted a patrol of Kurdish peshmerga forces northeast of Baghdad and killed six of them including a top commander, an Iraqi Kurdish official said.
   The attack took place in an area called Now Dorman on the western outskirts of the town of Khanaqin near the Iranian border.
   Mahmud Singawi, member of the peshmerga committee in the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, said one of those killed was the commander of peshmerga forces in Khanaqin.
   Also on Saturday a roadside bomb attack near a checkpoint in eastern Baghdad killed three policemen and a member of a local group fighting al-Qaeda, security officials said.
   The attack in Camp Sarah neighbourhood left another eight people wounded, including five civilians, they said, adding that three cars were also burnt in the explosion.
   The officials said the checkpoint was jointly manned by Iraqi policemen and the fighters from the anti-Qaeda group.