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Security issues may cloud trade agenda at SAARC summit

Reuters, Colombo

Leaders of South Asia, home to a fifth of humanity, meet this weekend at a summit aiming to boost trade and reduce poverty but a wave of deadly bombings in India, its biggest member, means terrorism could dominate the agenda.

Formed more than 20 years ago to foster economic development in one of the world's poorest regions, old rivalries among members have blocked any meaningful progress for the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC.

SAARC summits are often little more than a backdrop to the bilateral meeting between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan.

Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Afghanistan make up the rest of SAARC.

The Aug. 2-3 heads of state summit in Sri Lanka will be held under the shadow of a string of bomb blasts in India, and another at its embassy in Kabul last month, which India blamed on Pakistan's spy agency. The attacks together killed more than 100 people.

"Terrorism is an elephant in the drawing room," C. Uday Bhaskar, New Delhi-based foreign policy analyst, told Reuters.

"It is a major challenge for the region and it will be very odd if the countries meet and don't discuss it."

The summit is also being held a country fighting a 25-year civil war, now in a decisive stage, with the government pursuing a strategy to gradually retake rebel stronghold samid an almost daily barrage of land, sea and air attacks. The conflict has killed more than 70,000 people.

The Tamil Tigers had declared a 10-day unilateral truce as a goodwill gesture for the summit but the government dismissed it saying it was sceptical of the rebel's sincerity.

Officials say no major agreements are expected-accords could include one to launch a SAARC Development Fund (SDF), a pact on regional legal cooperation to fight crimes and a fund to manage the food and energy crisis.

"Food crisis is a global crisis and it has regional implication," Sri Lanka foreign ministry spokesman, Prasad Kariyawasam, said. "The SAARC community will address this issue."

Intra-SAARC commerce remains at just over five percent of South Asian nations' total trade, compared to other regional forums such as Asean's internal trade at 26 percent.

"The SAARC perhaps is the only region in the world which has not learnt lessons from the rapid development around the world," said Tariq Sayeed, president of the SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Progress has also been stymied due to domestic politics such as Pakistan refusing to give India special trade preferences.

Pakistan says trade relations will improve once India addresses Kashmir, the bone of contention between the two sides who claim the disputed region in full but rule it in part, and have twice gone to war over it.

Security problems are roiling other SAARC nations too.

While Afghanistan battles a resurgent Taliban and its effects singe Pakistan's western borders, a long conflict drags in Sri Lanka. Nepal still does not have a government and Bangladesh's army-backed administration struggles to hold elections.

NKorea facing worst food crisis since 1990s: UN

AP, Beijing

Flooding and poor harvests have caused North Korea's worst food crisis since the late 1990s and have put millions at risk, the United Nations' food agency said Wednesday.

The food shortage threatens widespread malnutrition, the World Food Program said.

"Millions of vulnerable North Koreans are at risk of slipping toward precarious hunger levels," Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the WFP's country director for North Korea, told a news conference.

The WFP had been given permission to launch a new operation to target those most vulnerable in eight of the country's 10 provinces, or 6.4 million people, up from a current 1.2 million.

An international appeal for aid would be launched in the next two weeks. Food aid is needed to tide people over for the next three to four months until the next harvest, he said.

While 400,000 metric tons of U.S. food aid have already shipped, there is an urgent need for $20 million to get through the next autumn harvest, de Margerie said. "We are running against the clock here," he said. The North has resorted to outside handouts to help feed its 23 million people since the mid-1990s when natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its centrally controlled economy. An estimated 2 million people died of hunger at the time. But outside aid has fallen this year, de Margerie said, compounded by domestic shortfalls.

The amount of food given in government rations to urban dwellers has fallen in the last few months, as prices for staple goods have risen dramatically due to less internal transfers of food.

US Congress acts to suspend bid to upgrade Pakistan fighter fleet

AFP, Washington

The US Congress moved to suspend a bid by President George W. Bush's administration to shift millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan from counter-terrorism programs to upgrading Islamabad's F-16 fighter jets.

"We have requested a hold on the administration's planned reprogramming pending additional information," a joint statement by Democratic lawmakers Howard Berman and Nita Lowey, who head key panels in the House of Representatives said Tuesday.

"We are concerned that the administration's proposal to use military assistance to pay for the F-16 upgrades will divert funds from more effective counterterrorism tools like helicopters, TOW missiles, and night-vision goggles," said Berman, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, and Lowey, chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee on foreign programs.

The White House said last week that it wanted to shift 230 million dollars in aid to Pakistan from counter-terrorism programs to upgrading Pakistan's aging F-16 fighter jets.

The move, it said, was aimed at easing fiscal pressures faced by the Pakistani government stemming partly from soaring food and energy costs.

US lawmakers were reportedly angered by the move.

They felt that Pakistan did not use its F-16s in support of the campaign against fighters in its remote tribal areas out of a fear that civilian casualties could fuel support for extremists.

US President George W. Bush held talks with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday focused on cooperation to fight Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists and easing Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions.

Gilani, whose new government has been facing intense US pressure to crack down on Pakistan-based militants, told reporters after the meeting that Pakistan was committed to fighting extremists.

The package for the F-16 fighters would run about two-thirds of the 300 million dollars that Pakistan will get this year in US aid for military equipment and training, the Times said.

Pakistan troops kill 20 militants in northwest

AFP, Peshawar

Pakistani troops Wednesday killed more than 20 Islamist militants in the troubled northwestern Swat Valley, a military spokesman said.

A five-hour gunbattle erupted after fighters loyal to pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah attacked a checkpost in the town of Sarbanda, Major Mohammad Farooq told reporters.

The fighting came a day after rebels kidnapped 30 security officials in Swat, where a two-month-old peace deal between the militants and Pakistani authorities is under threat. "The fighting which broke out early this morning lasted four to five hours after which the militants fled, leaving behind 20 dead," Farooq said, adding that many rebels were wounded.

There were no casualties to Pakistani troops, he said.

Farooq said soldiers also flushed out militants from the main police station in Swat's Matta district after pounding their positions in heavy shelling overnight. The police station was seized by militants recently, he said.

The government signed a peace deal with the Swat militants in May and agreed to gradually pull out troops and introduce an Islamic justice system. In exchange, the rebels said they would halt attacks and surrender arms.

Taliban militants shot dead a woman in a Pakistani tribal area after accusing her of spying for US forces across the border in Afghanistan, an official said Wednesday.

The body of Gulzada Bibi, 30, was found dumped on open ground Wednesday 14 kilometres (eight miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in the restive North Waziristan district.

A note found near her body said Bibi was spying for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, a Pakistani security official told AFP.

"She was killed while talking to her US contacts by satellite phone," the official quoted the note as saying.

Militants have killed several tribesmen in recent months, accusing them of spying for US-led forces across the border.

Pakistan has come under growing US pressure to clamp down on Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants using the tribal belt as a safe haven for launching attacks on international troops in Afghanistan.

The region was wracked by fighting in late 2007 and early 2008 as Fazlullah led a campaign, backed by suicide bombers, to enforce harsh Sharia law in the scenic region.

But violence has erupted again in the area in recent weeks, adding to US concerns about Islamabad's efforts to negotiate with hardliners based near the Afghan border.

Militants burned down Pakistan's only ski resort, located near near Swat, in June.

Nepal's president asks Maoists to form govt

AFP, Kathmandu

Nepal's president has invited former rebel Maoists to form the first government in the world's newest republic in a bid to end weeks of political deadlock, state media reported on Wednesday.

President Ram Baran Yadav gave the Maoists seven days to form the administration. Political wrangling has left Nepal without a formal government since last month, when it became a republic after abolishing its monarchy.

The president "has called on the party to forge a political consensus for the constitution of council of ministers and the appointment of the prime minister," said state-run Rising Nepal, quoting the president's office.

The Maoists emerged as the single largest party in a newly-elected, 601-seat constituent assembly that will produce the impoverished country's new constitution within two years.

But political wrangling has left Nepal with no formal government since May 28 after the constituent assembly abolished the nation's 240-year old Hindu monarchy and declared the country a federal democratic republic.

Nepal was plunged into political crisis last week when the Maoists declared they would not form the first post-royal government after the defeat of their candidate for president.

Yadav, who won the presidential contest, is from the Nepali Congress party, the main rival to the Maoists.

But the former rebels, who won more than a third of seats in the assembly, later said they were willing to lead a new administration as long as certain conditions were met.

Those included demands for a guarantee from the other three main rival political blocs that they would make no attempt to topple their government for at least two years.

They also want rival parties to agree to allow them to push through a "minimum programme" that includes revolutionary land reforms.

The Maoists, who waged a deadly revolt for 10 years, want to overturn what they call a "feudal," caste-ridden system.

The other parties had earlier expressed reluctance to accept the Maoist demands.

25 killed in fresh fighting ahead of summit

AFP, Colombo

Twenty-one Tamil rebels and four government troops were killed in fresh fighting in Sri Lanka's embattled north as the nation readied to host a summit of regional leaders, officials said Wednesday.

The palm-fringed island will be the venue for the two-day summit of leaders of the 15th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) which opens Saturday. Defence ministry officials said 21 separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas were killed in clashes Tuesday in the northern Wanni region 250 kilometres (160 miles) north of the capital. Four soldiers also died, officials said, adding that fighting raged in the north where troops were advancing into territory held by the guerrillas.

The government last month rejected a rebel offer for a brief unilateral ceasefire for the summit and has kept up military raids on insurgent positions in the decades-old conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The report of new deaths came as officials of the eight-nation South Asian grouping were in the second day of talks to lay the ground for the summit that will focus on trade and terrorism.

Curfew imposed amid fighting in Pakistan valley

AP, Peshawar

Pakistan imposed a round-the-clock curfew in a restive mountain valley in the northwest on Wednesday as the army claimed more than 20 militants died in clashes with security forces.

The army spokesman's office said the curfew was declared indefinitely throughout the Swat Valley - a day after pro-Taliban militants there abducted at least 25 police and paramilitary troops. Clashes Tuesday also left two troops and two militants dead. The rising violence could herald an end to a May peace deal between the provincial government and a militant cleric, Mullah Fazlullah, whose supporters last year took control of tracts of the valley before an army operation drove them out.

Fazlullah has threatened attacks on the government of North West Frontier Province, where Swat is located, accusing it of not honoring the May peace accord.

Karadzic in UN custody in Netherlands

AP, The Hague

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic sat in a U.N. jail cell Wednesday after being flown to the Netherlands in the dead of night to face charges of genocide against Muslims and Croats during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

His arrival in a white Serbian government jet marked the end of a 13-year effort by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to take custody of its most wanted war criminal. Karadzic is accused or orchestrating the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the sufferings of hundreds of thousands more. The tribunal will "ensure his well being and right to a fair trial as much as possible and in accordance with the highest international standards," spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic said in confirming Karadzic's arrival at the detention center outside The Hague.Prosecutors allege Karadzic masterminded atrocities including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, the deadly siege of Sarajevo, and the detention of tens of thousands of people in 20 concentration camps where many were tortured, starved and sexually abused.

He was expected to be summoned before a judge within a few days and to be asked to enter pleas on each of the 11 counts against him, including genocide, extermination and persecution.

Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, said his client will postpone entering a formal plea for 30 days, the maximum allowed under court rules. It is likely to be several months before his trial begins, and it could last several years.

Chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz scheduled a news conference for later Wednesday.

Vujacic, speaking from Belgrade, acknowledged he never filed an appeal against Karadzic's extradition from Serbia. The lawyer previously claimed he sent an appeal by registered mail from Bosnia before a midnight deadline on Friday.

The uncertainty over the appeal helped stall Karadzic's handover, Vujacic said.

The tribunal declined to give details of Karadzic's transfer to The Hague, citing security in future cases. But the confirmation of his arrival came shortly after a helicopter landed behind the high wall of the jail while another helicopter hovered overhead. Two black minivans drove through the prison gates moments earlier.

Hours before masked drivers whisked Karadzic to Belgrade's airport early Wednesday, about 15,000 Serb extremists rallied in a main square in the Serbian capital, demanding a halt to the extradition. Several hundred hooligans separated from the group and hurled stones and burning flares at riot police.