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Colombia brought what it called threats of war from neighbouring Venezuela to the UN security council on Wednesday after Hugo Chavez, leader of the neighbouring country, told his army to get ready to fight.
   For months Chavez has said that a military pact signed in October between Bogota and Washington could set the stage for a US invasion of Venezuela from Colombian territory.
   The United States and Colombia dismiss that idea, saying their cooperation is aimed strictly at combating drug traffickers and Marxist insurgents within Colombia.
   During a televised address on Sunday, Chavez ordered his military to prepare for war as the best way to preserve peace.
   Colombia responded with a letter to the UN security council ‘about Venezuela’s threats of using force against Colombia,’ a foreign ministry statement said, asking that the letter be distributed to all members of the council.
   The formal complaint could further anger Chavez, the fiery leftist revolutionary who once called former US president George W Bush ‘the devil.’
   ‘We’ve handed over a letter explaining in detail concerns Colombia has about remarks by the president Chavez and other sensitive matters,’ foreign minister Jaime Bermudez said at an Asia-Pacific economic cooperation summit in Singapore. ‘We have always said the door for dialogue is open ... we have still not had any contact,’ he said.
   Recriminations have increased recently, with Colombia accusing Chavez of not helping to combat drug-running rebels hiding out on Venezuela’s side of the border and Chavez characterising Colombia as a lap-dog of the US ‘empire.’
   ‘Prepare yourselves for war,’ Chavez told his military commanders during his regular Sunday TV programme. ‘If you want peace you have to be ready for war.’

The World Council of Churches on Thursday called on churches around the world to ring their bells 350 times during the Copenhagen climate change summit on December 13 as a call to action on global warming.
   The leading council of Christian and Orthodox churches also invited places of worship for other faiths to join a symbolic ‘chain of chimes and prayers’ stretching around the world from the international date line in the South Pacific.
   ‘On that Sunday, midway through the UN summit, the WCC invites churches around the world to use their bells, drums, gongs or whatever their tradition offers to call people to prayer and action in the face of climate change,’ the council said in a statement.
   ‘By sounding their bells or other instruments 350 times, participating churches will symbolise the 350 parts per million that mark the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere according to many scientists,’ it added.

The US envoy to Afghanistan has warned against sending thousands more troops to the country as the president, Barack Obama, weights strategy options in the eight-year conflict, reports said Thursday.
   The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that ambassador Karl Eikenberry, a retired army general who commanded US forces in Afghanistan from 2005-2007, detailed his concerns in classified cables last week.
   Eikenberry also expressed worries about the behaviour of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who was re-elected to a five year term in August polls tainted by widespread fraud, the Post said.
   The ambassador sent his strongly worded correspondence as Obama weighs his options on what to do about a growing Taliban insurgency that has put at risk an eight-year US-led effort to pacify the country.
   At a critical meeting of his war cabinet on Wednesday, the Times said, Obama asked Eikenberry about his concerns and also raised questions about the four options now before him.
   These include a low-end option involving the deployment of about 10,000 to 15,000 US troops, mostly trainers to accelerate the expansion of the Afghan security forces.
   The other options call for even larger buildups of the 68,000-strong US force.
   The administration’s deep ambivalence about an expanding military commitment with a weak and allegedly corrupt government as its partner in Kabul was reflected in a White House statement read out at the end of the session.
   ‘The president believes that we need to make clear to the Afghan government that our commitment is not open-ended,’ a White House official told journalists.
   ‘After years of substantial investments by the American people, governance in Afghanistan must improve in a reasonable period of time to ensure a successful transition to our Afghan partner.’
   Obama departs Thursday on his first presidential tour of Asia, putting off for at least another nine days what may be the most fateful decision of his presidency.
   The defence secretary, Robert Gates, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the vice president, Joe Biden, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, joined the president in the White House situation room for Wednesday’s session, the eighth since August.
   Eikenberry participated by video link from Afghanistan, as did General Stanley McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander.
   The ambassador’s position, as reported in the newspaper accounts, puts him at sharp odds with McChrystal, who has called for more than 40,000 additional US troops over the next year and warned that without them the US mission is likely to fail.
   Another proposal is to send in 30,000 extra troops, while a third envisages ramping up the numbers by between 20,000 and 25,000, the Times said.

Fugitive former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra accused his country’s rulers of ‘false patriotism’ as he delivered a lecture in his new role as Cambodia’s economic adviser Thursday.
   The billionaire, ousted in a 2006 coup and living abroad to avoid jail for graft, addressed some 300 members of business and government at Cambodia’s finance ministry amid tensions over Phnom Penh’s refusal to extradite him.
   ‘I see a lot of synergy between your country and mine. What is good for you will also be good for my country. Of course not all my compatriots see it that way right now,’ Thaksin said.
   ‘I do not believe those who do not share our vision right now are myopic. Their domestic political compulsions force them to false patriotism,’ he added.
   Cambodia outraged Thailand on Wednesday by rejecting its request to extradite Thaksin, saying the charges on which the ousted Thai leader had been sentenced in absentia to two years in prison were politically motivated.
   Security officials ushered reporters out of the room three minutes into the Thaksin lecture, titled ‘Cambodia and the World after the Financial Crisis’, but state television later broadcast his wide-ranging talk.
   ‘If you can build trust and confidence, paper can turn to money. If there’s no trust and confidence, your money can turn to paper,’ Thaksin said.
   Thaksin later flew to the tourist hub Siem Reap where he was greeted by dozens of weeping, joyful supporters who crossed from northeast Thailand to give roses and hugs to the tycoon as he arrived at a hotel.
   He later toured Angkor Wat temple escorted by Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen’s bodyguards, but was cheered by tourists and posed for photos with them.

A Nepalese government minister who repeatedly slapped a senior civil servant in the face for sending an old car to pick her up is to face charges, the police said Thursday.
   The deputy agriculture minister, Karima Begam, enraged government workers in Nepal when she grabbed the civil servant by the collar and hit him across the face after he failed to send the car she had requested for an official visit.
   Hundreds of civil servants marched through the capital Kathmandu on Wednesday to demand action against the minister, while government workers in the southern district of Parsa where the incident occurred went on strike.
   ‘A public offence case was filed against Karima Begam on Wednesday evening,’ Subodh Acharya, district police chief for Parsa, told AFP.
   He said the minister would be arrested but would likely be given bail.
   Begam was Wednesday unrepentant over her actions, telling AFP she had slapped the functionary, Parsa Durga Prasad Bhandari, to ‘make him more aware of his duties and responsibilities.’
   She was apparently angered by the fact that he had not sent his best car to pick her up from a provincial airport during an official visit, instead dispatching an older model.
   ‘How could a government employee humiliate the minister?’ she asked.

Chinese state agents regularly abduct citizens and detain them for days or months in secret, illegal ‘black jails’, subjecting them to physical and psychological abuses, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
   The US-based rights group in a new report called on China to shut down the detention facilities, many of which it said were housed in state-owned hotels, nursing homes and psychiatric care units, and bring their managers to justice.
   ‘The existence of black jails in the heart of Beijing makes a mockery of the Chinese government’s rhetoric on improving human rights and respecting the rule of law,’ said Sophie Richardson, the group’s Asia advocacy director.
   ‘The government should move swiftly to close these facilities, investigate those running them and provide assistance to those abused in them,’ she said in a statement accompanying the report.
   Human Rights Watch said it had compiled the report from research carried out in Beijing and several other Chinese cities in April and May this year, including interviews with 38 people who said they were held in black jails.
   The group said many of those imprisoned illegally by government officials, security forces and their agents were petitioners seeking redress from authorities over a variety of problems, from land grabs to police misconduct.
   ‘This is a particularly pernicious form of detention,’ Richardson told a press conference in Hong Kong, noting that it was impossible to know how many ‘black jails’ existed or how many detainees were held as there were no records.
   There could be 50 black jails in the Beijing area alone, she said.
   In the Chinese capital, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang reiterated Beijing’s denial of the existence of such facilities, telling reporters: ‘I can assure you that there are no so-called ‘black jails’ in China.’
   He said petitioners were permitted to go through the ‘proper channels’ to air their grievances, and their cases would be handled ‘according to the law’.

The international Red Cross on Thursday warned that the majority of the world’s 26 million displaced people were often neglected because they found refuge with local communities instead of in camps.
   ‘The focus on camps means that what happens to the majority of displaced people —those who seek refuge with host communities — is often ignored,’ the International Committee of the Red Cross chief, Jakob Kellenberger said.
   Only 15 per cent of internally displaced people—who have fled their homes due to wars or crises but never leave their home country—are currently in camps, the ICRC president estimated.
   Relief aid is often centred on camps swiftly set up by aid agencies or local authorities, while those who found shelter with relatives or local communities are dispersed and may not be noticed or reached by aid agencies.
   ‘Displaced people in hosting families are the vast majority. It’s the case in Republic Democratic of Congo or Pakistan,’ Kellenberger told journalists at the launch of a report on the plight of the displaced.
   ‘It would be wrong to say that only IDPs in camps receive help. But the purpose of this report is to draw attention to the fact that assistance is needed for these (other) people’, he added.
   The ICRC said in the report that camps might even make things worse by undermining livelihoods and encouraging a culture of dependency, thereby prolonging humanitarian crises in some instances.

Myanmar’s junta leader General Than Shwe arrived in Sri Lanka on a state visit Thursday to be greeted by a 21-gun salute and guard of honour.
   The president, Mahinda Rajapakse, welcomed Than Shwe at Bandaranaike International Airport, before the Myanmar general was driven to the pilgrim town of Kandy, where the two are due to hold talks, officials said.
   Sri Lanka and Myanmar both practise Theravada Buddhism and have had cultural and religious ties since the 11th century.
   Myanmar monks living in Sri Lanka have warned Colombo that its increasingly close relations with Myanmar’s military regime would further raise international concern over the island’s rights record.
   In a statement on Wednesday, the monks said Rajapakse was ‘foolish’ to become associated with Than Shwe.
   A spokesman for the monks said they were not demonstrating against Than Shwe’s visit due to safety fears.

Joining hands with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in demanding former president Gene- ral Pervez Musharraf’s trial under the Article Six of the Constitution, the Pakistan People’s Party has vowed to put the former general behind bars, reports ANI on Thursday.
   Furious over Musharraf’s remarks against the president, Asif Ali Zardari, senior Punjab minister and PPP leader Raja Riaz Ahmed Musharraf’s trial under the high treason charges was inevitable and that no power can save him from prosecution.
   Addressing a press conference, Ahmed said his party would hold demonstrations against Musharraf throughout Punjab on November 16 over his ‘filthy’ remarks against Zardari.

Tens of thousands of well-wishers lined the streets of Tokyo on Thursday for a parade on the 20th anniversary of the coronation of Emperor Akihito, who urged Japanese not to forget the lessons of Second World War.
   Officials said they expected more than 50,000 people to gather around the Imperial Palace for the parade, a concert and other events marking Akihito’s ascent to the world’s oldest hereditary throne. Akihito and the prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, spoke at a celebration later in the day.
   Hatoyama then led the gathering in three cheers of ‘Banzai!’ — a traditional Japanese cheer.

Pakistani spokesman for the Iranian consulate at point blank range as he set off for work in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Thursday, the police said.
   Attackers targeted Abu Al-Hasan Jaffry, director of public relations and protocol at the consulate in Peshawar, shortly after he left home in his car, senior police official Nisar Marwat said.
   Bullet holes punctured his car, sending shards of glass on to the road, according to television footage from Peshawar, which has been hit by a wave of attacks.
   The killing was condemned by Iran and the United States but the motive for the attack was not immediately clear.
   Security officials said they suspected those responsible were part of the same group behind kidnappings last year in Peshawar of an Iranian diplomat and Afghanistan’s ambassador-designate, and the killing of a US development worker.
   Relations between Iran and Pakistan are warm but tensions rose last month when Tehran blamed Pakistan-based militants for a suicide attack that killed 42 people, including 15 members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard.

Iran has recorded at least 3,409 deaths from AIDS, while another 2,097 people have been diagnosed as having the disease, according to health ministry figures reported by the ILNA news agency on Thursday.
   The news agency said a total of 20,130 people had tested positive for HIV. It did not specify whether that figure included those who had gone on to develop AIDS.
   The report said men accounted for a full 93 per cent of recorded HIV infections.
   With testing facilities limited and HIV-infected people or those living with AIDS often unwilling to come forward, the health ministry has previously estimated that total HIV infections are four times higher than the recorded figure.
   The ministry says that intravenous drug use is the most common way HIV is transmitted in Iran.
   It has not made clear when it started compiling its figures.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, arrived in Manila on Thursday in a bid to deepen defence ties with a country fighting Islamist militants who officials say are now using Iraq-style tactics.
   The two-day visit comes as US Special Forces advisers are in the southern Philippines to train and equip Filipino soldiers in combating the Abu Sayyaf group that is blamed for the Southeast Asian nation’s worst terrorist attacks.
   Hillary is likely to hear ‘strong support’ from the president, Gloria Arroyo, and her defence officials for the Visiting Forces Agreement, a 1999 treaty which governs the deployment of US troops in the Philippines, Arroyo’s aides said.
   On the eve of Hillary’s visit, the police broke up a protest by 70 left-leaning students in Manila who demanded the pullout of the US military advisers, saying they are an affront to the nation’s sovereignty.
   But a senior state department official said most Filipinos supported the military ties with the United States.

Sri Lanka’s top general, Sarath Fonseka, the architect of the army’s victory over Tamil rebels who was switched to a more ceremonial position, quit Thursday, a military source said.
   Fonseka, who is widely tipped to challenge the president, Mahinda Rajapakse, in elections next year, submitted his resignation as chief of defence staff after a ceremony welcoming Myanmar’s junta leader at the airport, the source said.
   ‘He gave his letter of resignation this afternoon and expects the government to ensure his security because he was the main figure responsible for crushing Tamil Tigers,’ the source close to him said.
   Fonseka, 58, the country’s only four-star general, has been at loggerheads with the government in recent months after he was removed as army chief and made chief of defence staff, which has no command responsibilities.

North Korea said the South will pay ‘an expensive price’ for firing at Pyongyang’s retreating patrol boat on Tuesday, keeping up its sabre rattling two days after a naval gunfight raised tension between the rivals.
   The threat, published in the North’s official Rodong Sinmun daily, comes amid reports officials from the two Koreas met recently to discuss a possible summit between their leaders but failed to reach agreement.
   The navies from the two sides exchanged gunfire on Tuesday for the first time in seven years, reminding financial market players of the security threat the North poses to the region, which accounts for one-sixth of the global economy.
   ‘Warmongers who like to play with fire will be certain to pay an expensive price,’ Rodong Sinmun daily said in an editorial.
   The communist daily said the North had been taking action to relieve tension and forge cooperation with the South, ‘with the overall situation on the Korean peninsula heading for the resolution of the problems through dialogue.’
   ‘The armed clash on the West (Yellow) Sea was not an accident but was a premeditated act of aggression by the South’s military seeking intensifying of tensions on the Korean peninsula.’