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The Sri Lankan government faced renewed demands Friday to free nearly 300,000 war-displaced civilians, who fled Tamil Tiger rebel territory, from tightly guarded state-run camps.
   New York-based Human Rights Watch said the squalid camps, which are ringed with barbed wire, were a ‘national disgrace’ and violated international law.
   ‘For more than a year, the Sri Lankan government has detained virtually everyone, including entire families, displaced by the fighting in the north in military-run camps, in violation of international law,’ the group said.
   ‘Treating all these men, women, and children as if they were Tamil Tiger fighters is a national disgrace,’ said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
   The island’s government has promised to resettle those in the camps by the end of the year, once it weeds out suspected rebels.
   It also calls the camps ‘welfare villages’ — even though the civilians have no freedom of movement.
   ‘The Sri Lankan government should end the illegal detention of nearly 300,000 ethnic Tamils displaced by the recently ended conflict in Sri Lanka,’ Human Rights Watch said.
   Sri Lanka promised UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon during his visit to the island last month that most of the civilians will be re-settled in their homes and villages within six months.
   The Tamil Tigers were defeated last month with the annihilation of the rebel leadership after an assault in the north-eastern district of Mullaittivu.
   ‘Many people are in the camps not because they have no other place to go,’ said Adams. ‘They are in the camps because the government does not allow them to leave.’
   He said conditions in the camps were overcrowded, some holding twice the number recommended by the United Nations High Commi-ssioner for Refugees.

Myanmar’s ruling generals should allow Aung San Suu Kyi to campaign for her party, the National League for Democracy, in elections due next year, former Singapore prime minister Goh Chok Tong said in remarks published Friday.
   ‘Because if she’s not campaigning for the party and whoever wins, well, one could argue that it’s not quite legitimate because the main opposition party was not campaigning with its leader,’ he was quoted as saying by broadcaster Channel NewsAsia on its website.
   Speaking to Singapore media at the end of a four-day trip to politically isolated Myanmar, Goh reiterated the city-state’s dismay over the arrest of the pro-democracy icon for allegedly allowing an American man to enter her home.
   Goh said Singapore was ‘concerned as to what the verdict will be like and what the sentence will be like.’
   The country’s military regime said the Nobel Peace Prize winner breached the terms of her house arrest for allowing the American man to swim to her lakeside home in May.
   Suu Kyi, 63, is currently on trial and faces between three and five years in jail if convicted, which would keep her locked up far beyond controversial elections which the military regime has promised to hold next year.
   Critics have dismissed the planned polls as a sham designed to entrench the military’s hold on power, as Suu Kyi is barred from standing for election herself.
   Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention since the junta refused to recognise the National League for Democracy’s landslide victory in the country’s last elections in 1990.

A New Zealand politician quit parliament Friday, nine days after he resigned as a government minister over sex allegations.
   Since it was revealed Richard Worth was being investigated by police over claims made by a Korean woman living in Auckland, other allegations have emerged that he pursued another woman with sexually explicit text messages and phone calls.
   Worth said Friday his conscience was clear, but said the decision to resign was in the best interests of Prime Minister John Key’s National Party.
   ‘It would be easy for me to be bitter about the avalanche of rumour and innuendo that has led me into making this decision, which I regard as being in the best interests of my party,’ he said in a statement.
   He reiterated he had not committed any crime and said he was confident he would be cleared of any criminal conduct.
   Key welcomed Worth’s decision Friday, describing it as a ‘sensible course of action’.
   ‘The decision gives the country an opportunity to move forward and focus on the issues that matter,’ Key said.
   The former minister of internal affairs, who entered parliament in 1999, has been under fire as details of the allegations against him gradually leaked into the media following his resignation last week.
   The allegations that Worth had sent ‘vulgar’ text messages and phone calls had been made by a woman in the opposition Labour Party, and Worth blamed a political conspiracy for his downfall.
   Worth was the first minister to resign since Key’s centre-right National Party swept into government in elections in November, ending nine years in power for Helen Clark’s Labour Party.

The revelation that Democratic appropriations kingpins may face a House ethics investigation of their campaign receipts from lobbyists for recipients of government grants and contracts moves Republicans closer to gaining a corruption issue in 2010.
   Republicans know well how lapses in ethical standards can sink a political party. They lost control of the House in the 2006 midterm election, succumbing in part to accusations from Democrats that the GOP had produced a ‘culture of corruption’ in which lobbyists showered gifts on lawmakers in exchange for government contracts and other legislative favours.
   The Democratic chairman and senior Republican on the House ethics committee dropped their political bomb Thursday night, announcing that the panel is reviewing the practice of lawmakers steering money and contracts to favoured companies, and then receiving campaign contributions in return for the ‘earmarks.’
   The announcement came months after the Justice Department began a criminal investigation of the matter and a repetition of House votes on Republican motions — all of them defeated — calling for an ethics probe of lawmakers who engage in what is often called a ‘pay-to-play’ system for funnelling federal dollars to select companies and projects.
   Democratic Reps John Murtha of Pennsylvania, Pete Visclosky of Indiana and Jim Moran of Virginia, all members of the money-dispensing House Appropriations Committee, received significant campaign donations from lobbyists from a defunct firm, PMA, and its clients — companies that got money for pet projects.

US congressional negotiators on Thursday approved a $106 billion compromise bill largely backing President Barack Obama’s missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, but restricting his effort to quickly close the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
   The package was in limbo for hours over whether to include a provision to prevent the release of photos by US personnel depicting abuse of prisoners that Obama and some lawmakers fear could provoke a backlash against US troops.
   Obama intervened personally to lobby against the amendment but vowed to keep the pictures under wraps. He told lawmakers in a letter that the provision would ‘unnecessarily complicate the essential objective of supporting the troops.’
   On Thursday, a federal appeals court in New York stayed an order that the defence department release the photographs, giving the Obama administration time to argue its objections before the US Supreme Court.
   The American Civil Liberties Union has sued to make the photos public. Lawmakers from the Democratic-controlled Senate and House of Representatives voted along party lines to reject two attempts to reincorporate the provision into the bill.
   ‘All he (Obama) has to do today is use an executive order to declare these photos classified material,’ said Republican Senator John McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama and has pushed to keep the photos from being released.
   The overall package includes $79.9 billion for US forces in Iraq where Obama is trying to wind down the American presence and in Afghanistan where the president is ramping up operations to fight remaining al-Qaeda militants.
   The bill has grown steadily as Obama sought billions of dollars to also combat the H1N1 flu virus, which has now become a pandemic. He also asked for $108 billion in credit lines to shore up the International Monetary Fund as it helps developing countries weather the economic downturn.
   Democrats and Republicans have also larded up the bill with a few of their own items like military transport planes the Pentagon did not request and money to spur car sales through vouchers for consumers to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi, whose decades-old regime admitted to sponsoring terrorism in the 1980s, Thursday likened the United States to al-Qaeda during a landmark visit to Italy.
   Recalling the 1986 US bombing of Libya that killed dozens of people including Gaddafi’s adopted daughter, he asked: ‘What’s the difference between the US attack on our homes and the terrorist actions of al-Qaeda?’
   Gaddafi, 67, who arrived to a red-carpet welcome here on Wednesday, left Italian officials scrambling to confirm Rome’s close ties with Washington.
   ‘Just because we play host to Moamer Gaddafi doesn’t mean we agree with everything he says,’ said a clearly embarrassed Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
   Daniele Capezzone, a spokesman for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, added that whatever the Libyan leader may say against Washington, ‘nothing can call into question Italy’s friendship, gratitude and admiration of the United States.’

Former President Jimmy Carter Thursday reiterated that there can be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians without involving the militant group Hamas.
   His comments came shortly before he met with the militant group’s Syrian-based leader, Khaled Mashaal. Carter met with Mashaal twice under the Bush administration, angering some in the US government who said he was legitimising a group the US considers a terrorist organisation.
   But this was his first meeting under the Obama administration, which has launched a fresh quest for peace in the Middle East, and came as Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, was less than 400 miles away in Cairo preparing to visit Syria Friday.
   Carter, who went to Syria after observing elections in neighbouring Lebanon, stressed that he was in Damascus as a private citizen and not representing the Obama administration.
   Obama, also a Democrat, seems to be going in the direction that Carter has long advocated — engagement with long-time foes Iran and Syria. So far Obama, like the Bush administration, has drawn the line at meeting with Hamas. But in a speech in Cairo last week, Obama seemed to suggest some basis for believing that Palestinian militants who rule Gaza might be drawn into the peace process.
   As president, Carter helped broker an Israeli-Egyptian peace deal in the late 1970s and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote peace around the world. He has continued to pursue Mideast peace through his Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Centre foundation, and angered many Israelis for his 2006 book that compared Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians in the West Bank to apartheid.
   Speaking to reporters after meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, Carter said Hamas and its more moderate Fatah rivals must reconcile so they can negotiate effectively with Israel.
   ‘I don’t believe there is a possibility to have any peace between the Palestinians and Israel unless Hamas is involved directly in harmony with Fatah,’ he said.
   Carter said Obama’s pressure on Israel to freeze construction in West Bank settlements is an essential step toward restarting peace efforts.
   He said Israel is ‘very eager to avoid any serious disagreement or confrontation’ with the US and that Obama’s push for a two-state solution would be seriously considered by Israel.
   Carter also plans meetings in Israel and the West Bank over the weekend.
   Syria’s official news agency reported that Assad discussed with Carter ways to reactivate the peace process and stressed that Damascus is committed to peace that guarantees the return of Arab rights.

US and NATO forces in Afghanistan must focus on protecting ordinary Afghans and reducing civilian casualties, their incoming commander said in an interview broadcast on Friday.
   General Stanley McChrystal added that finding Osama bin Laden and other ‘high value’ targets would ‘just be a supporting’ effort to the aim of protecting ordinary Afghans.
   ‘When we are in position, one of the things we’ll do is reviewing all of our rules of engagement and all the instructions to our units, with the emphasis that we are fighting for the population,’ he told BBC radio.
   ‘That involves protecting them both from the enemy and from unintended consequences of our operation, because we know that although an operation may be conducted for the right reason, if it has negative effects it can have a negative outcome for everyone,’ he added.
   Relations between Kabul and Washington have been strained by a number of incidents in which civilians were injured or killed in attacks on Taliban insurgents in the war-scarred country.
   Last month, Afghan president Hamid Karzai charged that up to 130 died in US air strikes, while a joint investigation said ‘a number of civilians’ were killed in clashes with Taliban fighters.

A federal grand jury indicted a former Pentagon official who had a ‘top secret’ security clearance on charges of spying for China and lying to cover up his actions, the Justice Department has said.
   Retired air force Lieutenant Colonel James Wilbur Fondren, a deputy director of the US Pacific Command’s Washington Liaison Office, was arrested in mid-May and charged with conspiracy to pass classified information to an agent of China.
   The charges announced Thursday include one count of conspiracy to communicate classified information to a foreign government agent and act as an illegal foreign agent; four counts of unlawfully communicating classified information to a foreign government agent; and three counts of lying to FBI agents.
   If convicted on all charges, Fondren, 62, faces up to 60 years in prison, the Justice Department said in a statement.
   According to the indictment, Fondren gave classified Pentagon documents and other information to Tai Shen Kuo, a naturalized US citizen from Taiwan, during a period from around November 2004 to February 2008.
   ‘Fondren was aware that Kuo had maintained a close relationship with an official of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), to whom Kuo introduced Fondren during a trip the two took to the PRC in March 1999,’ reads the statement.
   ‘As Kuo well knew, this individual was an official of the PRC government. Fondren and the PRC official exchanged more than 40 email messages between March 1999 and November 2000.’
   Fondren allegedly ‘provided classified information through Kuo, under the guise of consulting services, using a business that had Kuo as its sole customer. Fondren would incorporate this information into ‘opinion papers’ that he sold to Kuo.’
   When Federal Bureau of Investigations agents interviewed Fondren, the indictment alleges, the retired colonel ‘falsely represented’ that the opinion papers were based on media report and from his experience.

EU nations are divided over whether to increase sanctions against the Myanmar regime and will await the outcome of the current trial of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, sources said Friday.
   ‘As far as I am aware member states are very divided on that issue,’ an EU official said.
   The EU sanctions — in place since 1996 — include a travel ban and the freezing of assets of Myanmar’s leaders and their relatives, as well as a ban on arms exports to the country.
   The sanctions also limit diplomatic relations between the Southeast Asian nation and the European bloc.
   Last month EU foreign ministers asked experts to consider possible ways to beef up the current raft of sanctions
   According to another EU diplomat, the Czech EU presidency has prepared a list of possible options, ranging from boosting sanctions to increasing ‘political pressure.’
   ‘Britain and most member states are in favour of increasing sanctions, but others like Germany and Austria doubt their effectiveness,’ the source said.
   ‘We have to find the most effective method of persuading the regime to free all opposition figures and become more democratic’ and that could be through ‘fine-tuning the sanctions we already have in force,’ a European source said.
   If the EU ministers are going to wait for the result of the Aung San Suu Kyi trial then that wait just got longer.
   On Friday Myanmar officials postponed an appeal hearing and adjourned the main trial in what diplomats said were attempts by the junta to stall the legal process.

South Korea was bracing for a possible third nuclear test by the North, which a US official said was likely despite looming UN sanctions on the communist state for its previous test in May.
   Given the North’s track record of provocative behaviour and defiance of the United Nations, ‘common sense’ would dictate that it is preparing for another nuclear test, South Korean defence ministry spokesman Won Tae-jade told reporters Friday.
   He said the test was ‘probably possible.’
   However, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted an unidentified intelligence official as saying there was no imminent indication that Pyongyang was restoring a test site where the second underground blast took place on May 25.
   The conflicting reports and uncertainty about Pyongyang’s plans reflect the unpredictable and mysterious nature of the reclusive communist regime, which has defied the international community to push ahead with its military programme.
   It describes the nuclear program as a deterrent against possible U.S. attacks. Washington says it has no such intention and expresses fears that Pyongyang is trying to sell its nuclear technology to other rogue nations.
   ‘We are always bracing for any danger and any kind of provocation,’ Won said. ‘Recently, we have braced ourselves against all predictable possibilities regarding nuclear or missile situations.’
   The comments came after a US government official in Washington said late Thursday that Pyongyang could be preparing for a third nuclear test. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the unreleased information, would not provide details regarding the assessment.
   A third nuclear test would likely alienate the North further from its allies China and Russia, who have agreed with Western nations on imposing new U.N. sanctions to curb Pyongyang’s weapons exports and financial dealings. They would also allow inspections of suspect cargo in ports and on the high seas.

Anil Koirala queued for hours in Kathmandu's midsummer heat to see the palace of Nepal's ousted king, now reopened as a museum showcasing the lavish lifestyle of the former royals.
   The 21-year-old IT student from eastern Nepal said he had long been curious to see the private residence of the royal family, who left the palace a year ago after the abolition of the world's last Hindu monarchy.
   'I am both happy and sad,' he told AFP outside the Narayanhiti museum.
   'For an ordinary person like me, it would have never been possible (to come here) had the monarchy not been ousted. But I wish there was a king. Sometimes, I find it difficult to believe that we no longer have a monarchy.'
   A year after Nepal's ex-king Gyanendra left his sprawling palace to live as a commoner in a hunting lodge outside the capital, the former royals continue to fascinate Nepalese people.
   Long queues form daily outside the Narayanhiti museum, whose attractions include a gold-and-silver crafted ceremonial throne, banquet halls and even the ex-king's bedrooms.
   The Shah dynasty ruled Nepal for 240 years before it was abolished last May after Maoist rebels and mainstream parties signed a peace deal and joined forces against the unpopular Gyanendra.
   Both Gyanendra and his son, former crown prince Paras, who now lives in Singapore with his wife Himani and three children, have stayed out of the limelight in the past year.
   But Bharat Keshar Singh, a former Nepalese ambassador to Britain who now acts as honorary aide-de-camp to Gyanendra, told AFP the former king is in good spirits and continues to take a close interest in politics.
   'He's not unduly disturbed or morose, he has his own life -- he attends parties and weddings,' said Singh.
   'He reads all the news. I report to the king regularly and brief him if there is anything major, but he doesn't come out with his views.'
   Kishore Shrestha, editor of weekly tabloid Jana Aastha, which often runs scoops on the former royals, told AFP Gyanendra leads a quiet life at home, seeing relatively few people - in stark contrast to his former lifestyle.
   'He prefers to stay at his house, and often meets with former ADCs (aides-de-camp), and a few friends,' said Shrestha.
   'His relationship with his son Paras soured after the monarchy was abolished. Paras has been living in Singapore ever since, and only occasionally visits Nepal.'

A Buddhist monk was killed and another seriously injured when they were gunned down while collecting alms as more violence erupted in Thailand’s restive south, police said on Friday.
   The attack was the latest in a recent flare-up of bloody violence in the Muslim-majority region near the Malaysian border, where nearly 3,500 people have been killed in five years of unrest.
   Police said suspected separatist insurgents dressed in exercise clothes rode past on motorcycles and fired automatic weapons at the monks as they collected food donations in an urban area of Yala province.
   Thailand’s south has been hit by its deadliest week of violence this year, with 24 people killed and more than 40 injured in the last seven days, which included the fatal shooting of 10 Muslims praying in a mosque.

India is to phase out the controversial presence of large numbers of its troops in towns across the Muslim-majority Kashmir region, the country’s home minister announced Friday.
   Such a move would be the first time the armed forces have been pulled out of urban areas in the disputed region since an insurgency against Indian rule broke out in 1989.
   The announcement also comes amid sustained protests over last month’s suspected rape and murder of two local Muslim women, allegedly by members of the Indian security forces.
   Home minister P Chidambaran told a news conference in Srinagar, where he has been conducting an urgent review of security, that the army should carry out counter-insurgency operations ‘far away from towns and cities.’
   ‘In the inhabited areas we believe maintaining law and order is the primary responsibility of the state police,’ he said.

A Vietnamese lawyer said Friday he had filed the first legal action against a prime minister in the communist nation.
   Cu Huy Ha Vu said he submitted a court complaint against Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to seek the cancellation of a controversial bauxite mining plan.
   ‘I lodged a complaint with the Hanoi court on Thursday afternoon,’ Vu told the news agency.
   ‘It’s the first time in Vietnam a complaint has been lodged against the prime minister,’ he said.
   The court was not immediately able to confirm or deny the information.
   Vu alleged Dung’s decision had violated laws on the environment, defence and cultural heritage.
   ‘The prime minister signed a decision approving the plan for bauxite exploitation... It’s necessary to nullify the decision,’ the lawyer said.

The Philippines is using mediation to restart peace talks with Muslim separatist guerrillas in the south, despite recent fighting, President Gloria Arroyo said Friday.
   Speaking at a ceremony marking the 111th anniversary of the declaration of Philippine independence from Spanish rule, Arroyo said the Malaysian government was working to reopen the talks that stalled in August after rebel commanders attacked Christian communities.
   ‘We are awaiting advice from our third party facilitator, the government of Malaysia, on when peace talks will resume,’ Arroyo said, adding that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Rajak had given ‘assurances of his country’s support to the peace process’ with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Pakistani forces stepped up attacks on militants across the northwest on Friday as the US House of Representatives approved tripling aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years.
   Security forces have made progress in more than a month of fighting against Taliban militants in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, and in recent days have begun attacks in several other parts of the region.
   Rising Islamist violence has raised fears for Pakistan’s stability and for the safety of its nuclear arsenal but the offensive in Swat has reassured the United States about its commitment to the global campaign against militancy.