The New Nation - Internet Edition

US-Taiwan-China relationship back in balance

AP, Taipei

Taiwan's once-strained relations with the United States are back on track after the Bush administration approved a long-delayed $6.5 billion package of weapons to help the island defend itself against China.

Though China reacted angrily, the deal is also a sign that the sometimes shaky three-way relationship between China, Taiwan and the U.S. is moving back into balance.

China had profited from a rupture in U.S.-Taiwan military relations, but with the announcement of the deal, that rupture has now been repaired.

"The final decision of the U.S. executive branch reflected a prudent and rational decision," said Alexander Huang, a China policy expert at Tamkang University in Taipei. "It should be understood by Beijing and welcomed by Taipei."

The decision, announced late last week, is good news for Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who wants to maintain close ties with Washington while lessening tensions with the communist mainland, from which Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949.

Ma took power in May, after Taiwan's electorate decided it had had enough of the China-averse policies of former President Chen Shui-bian and his pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.

Those policies threatened to upset the balance that has kept the peace over the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait since Washington shifted its recognition in 1979 from Taipei to Beijing as the legitimate government of China.

Chen incensed Beijing, which still views Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to attack if the island ever moves to make the break permanent.

He also angered Washington, Taiwan's most important foreign partner. While the U.S. is legally committed to help defend Taiwan, it also wants good relations with China, which purchases huge amounts of American debt and is an important partner in efforts to shut down North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Amid unusually harsh criticism of Chen's pro-independence brinksmanship last year, the U.S. imposed an informal freeze on Taiwan arms deals - a move that delighted Beijing.

Washington never formally acknowledged the freeze and Douglas Pall, the former senior U.S. representative in Taiwan, told a Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, in a recent interview that the U.S. was merely holding off to avoid riling China during the Olympic Games.

Ma came into the presidency with an agenda of seeking better relations with China through increased trade and a formal renunciation of the independence option.

Now, with last week's announcement, he can quiet criticisms from the Democratic Progressive Party and its pro-independence allies that he has not done enough to provide protection for Taiwan.

Included in the American arms package are Patriot III missiles, Apache helicopters, parts for F-16 jet fighters and submarine-launched Harpoon missiles.

Conspicuously missing, however, is a feasibility study for U.S.-made diesel submarines, which Taiwan wants, but which some in the United States have criticized for their presumably offensive nature.

This appears to have been a deliberate decision by Washington to try to mitigate Chinese anger over the planned arms sale.

Still China has strongly denounced the deal, signaling its displeasure by abruptly canceling a series of high level military and diplomatic contacts with the United States.

The U.S. move "has contaminated the sound atmosphere for our military relations and gravely jeopardized China's national security," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing Tuesday.

But such pronouncements are almost a pro forma reaction, made whenever the U.S. sells weapons to Taiwan.

Taiwan expert Bruce Jacobs of Australia's Monash University said that if China is upset over the arms deal, it only has itself to blame, because of its deployment of more than 1,000 missiles aimed at Taiwan and its recent purchases of sophisticated weapons from Russia and other foreign suppliers.

"Taiwan needs these U.S. arms because China is threatening it," he said.

Huang says he supports Ma's policy of trying to reduce tensions with Beijing, insisting that it represents a marked improvement over Chen's independence brinksmanship.

However, he acknowledges that recent pitfalls in the program - lower than expected Chinese tourist arrivals in Taiwan for example - could reduce support.

Most Taiwanese are still in favor of Ma's program, though recent concerns over tainted Chinese milk-product shipments to the island have raised new questions about how far the relationship should go.

Ma publicly chided Beijing for failing to prevent the products from being treated with the industrial chemical melamine, after popular outrage forced government officials to remove more than 100 Chinese-made milk products from store shelves around Taiwan.

300 suspected illegal immigrants caught in US

AP, Greenville

Federal agents swept through a chicken processing plant Tuesday, detaining more than 300 suspected illegal immigrants, sending panicked workers running and screaming through the hallways. Worried relatives collected outside, fearful their loved ones would be deported.

Police and agents during a shift change ordered all workers at the House of Raeford's Columbia Farms to show identification, according to officials and witnesses. The business had been under scrutiny for months and the raid comes on the heels of even larger roundups at plants across the country.

Maria Juan, 22, was one of about 50 relatives and friends who huddled at the edge of the plant after the raid, some weeping and others talking frantically on cell phones. She was seeking information about her 68-year-old grandmother, a legal immigrant from Guatemala who went to work without identification papers but was later released.

"Families are going to be broken apart," Juan said. "There will be kids and babies left behind. Why are they doing this? Why? They didn't do anything. They only wanted to work."

Workers began running down hallways crying and screaming, said Herbert Rooker, 54, a third-shift janitor. He wore a blue band on his wrist, indicating agents had determined he was in the country legally.

Rooker had to duck into a bathroom to avoid what he called a stampede of people.

"I didn't know what they were running from. I had no reason to run," said Rooker who remained at the plant five hours after the raid because police still had his truck blocked.

Immigration officials kept the workers inside, spending most of the morning trying to figure out how many are in the country illegally, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McDonald said.

Plane crash kills 18 in Nepal, mostly German

AFP, Kathmandu

A passenger plane crashed on landing at a remote airfield in Nepal's Everest region Wednesday, killing 18 people most of whom were German tourists, Nepalese officials said.

The Yeti Airlines aircraft, flying from the capital Kathmandu to Lukla in eastern Nepal, burst into flames after crash-landing near the sloping runway, eyewitnesses reported.

Of the 19 people on board, 14 were foreigners and five were Nepalese, and only one-the Nepalese pilot of the Twin Otter plane-survived, airport official Mohan Adhikari said.

"There were 12 Germans and two Australians on the flight," said Adhikari.

Officials earlier said the passenger manifest listed two of the tourists as Swiss, but they were later confirmed as Australian.

Security staff and volunteers took two hours to extinguish the fire in the wreckage of the plane, said Suraj Kunwar, a local journalist at the airport, 140 kilometres (90 miles) northeast of Kathmandu.

Hundreds of tourists and residents from Lukla gathered to watch the recovery operation, many in tears.

"Officials at the airport here have said that bad weather was the reason for the crash. There was heavy cloud when the accident occurred," Kunwar said.

When the weather is clear, dozens of flights land daily at Lukla's Tenzing-Hillary airport, the gateway to Nepal's Everest region used by trekkers and mountaineers.

The airport was renamed after Mount Everest's first conquerors, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, earlier this year. Just 20 metres (66 feet) wide and 550 metres (1,800 feet) long, its runway perches on a hillside at an angle of around 11 degrees and was built using funds from Hillary's Himalayan Trust.

Fast moving weather patterns at the tiny airport-which is 2,757 metres above sea level-mean bad weather frequently halts operations.

"We are devastated to hear of this accident," Ang Tsering Sherpa, the president of the Union of Asian Alpine Associations, told AFP.

"In the season there are up to 50 flights per day into Lukla so the pilots are very used to landing there."

Flights from Kathmandu to Lukla take just over half an hour.

Yeti is a privately owned domestic airline founded in 1998 and which prides itself on running a service to many far-flung destinations across Nepal.

It has previously provided essential transport links to national and international relief teams working in Nepal as well as carrying many tourists.

The tourism trade is a major foreign currency earner for impoverished Nepal and since the end of a civil war in 2006 between the country's Maoists and the government, numbers of foreign visitors have increased.

This year around 500,000 tourists are expected, the highest number since 1999, with many coming to trek in the stunning Himalayan mountains that form Nepal's northern border with Chinese-controlled Tibet.

The Everest Base Camp trek-where tourists fly into Lukla and walk for around two weeks-is one of the most popular routes.

Turkey to vote on Iraq strikes after bloody rebel attack

AFP, Ankara

Turkish lawmakers were to vote Wednesday on extending the government's mandate to order military strikes against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, days after 17 soldiers were killed in a bloody attack near the border.

Parliament, scheduled to convene at 3:00 pm (1200 GMT), was expected to overwhelmingly back the motion that gives the government a fresh one-year mandate for one or more cross-border operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

All parties-except the Democratic Society Party, the country's main Kurdish political movement-are unanimous on the need to strike at the rebels inside their Iraqi strongholds amid nationwide outrage over Friday's deadly attack on a military outpost in the border province of Hakkari.

In what was the bloodiest fighting this year, a large group of rebels used the cover of heavy weapons fire from northern Iraq in an attempt to take out the outpost in the border province of Hakkari.

Twenty-three militants were killed in the ensuing clash, and two more rebels were killed Monday in continuing security operations in area, the army said.

Speaking a day before the vote, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed Turkey's right to self-defence and said Ankara would launch a cross-border incursion if necessary to rout the rebels.

Such an operation will be carried out "if need be, at the right time and under the right conditions with a view of obtaining the right result," Erdogan told lawmakers from his ruling party.

Syrian troops gather on Lebanese border

AP, Abboudiyeh

A few tents and trucks dotting a green hill across the river are about all that is visible of a Syrian troop deployment on Lebanon's northern border - a buildup that has raised concerns of a possible Syrian incursion.

There was no sign Wednesday that the Syrian troops were preparing to cross the border. Syria says the deployment - first made public several weeks ago - is aimed at preventing smuggling from Lebanon.

But the United States and some anti-Syrian politicians in Beirut have warned that Syria could attempt an incursion, a concern raised especially after a Sept. 27 car bombing in Damascus killed 17 people.

In Washington, Deputy State Department spokesman Robert Wood on Monday said, "Any intervention by Syrian troops into Lebanon would be unacceptable."

Syria's secular government has said the Damascus bombers were Islamic militants who entered from another country, though it did not specify which. Syrian President Bashar Assad had warned days earlier that militants were setting up base in northern Lebanon and that they could threaten Syrian security.

Two days after the Damascus blast, suspected militants bombed a bus carrying Lebanese soldiers in the northern port city of Tripoli, killing seven people - the second such attack against the Lebanese military. But there was no immediate sign of a connection to the Damascus bombing, although also Islamic militants are suspected.

The head of the anti-Syrian bloc in parliament, Saad Hariri, rejected Assad's claims of militants operating in northern Lebanon, saying the accusations and the Syrian deployment were part of a "series of intimidations against Lebanon."

Hadi Hobeish, a lawmaker allied to Hariri representing the Akkar region bordering Syria, accused Damascus of "attempting to give the excuse that there are extremists in the north to return to Lebanon."

NATO allies face call to step up opium battle

AFP, Brussels

NATO's top commander and Afghanistan's defence minister will urge allies Thursday to take new steps to crack down on the opium trade as the trafficking generates vital funds for the Taliban-led insurgency.

At the meeting in Budapest, Hungary, NATO defence ministers will hear a plea for a decisive assault by international forces on the illicit Afghan trade-a source of some 92 percent of the world's opium and heroin.

The 26 allies, in two days of informal talks, will also hold a first-ever NATO-Georgia Commission meeting at ministerial level, with Russia due to pull its troops out of Georgia by the end of the week.

NATO's commander, US General John Craddock, will call on the ministers to lift restrictions on the way the fight against opium production is waged, and focus on "high end" targets like drug dealers and laboratories.

"The current counter-narcotics effort is not effective. NATO must step up to this task," Craddock, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, said in Brussels ahead of the meeting.

"I'm not talking about crop eradication but about destroying the ability by Taliban to buy material for IEDs (improvised explosive devices), the ability by Taliban to buy the trigger."

But the move has met resistance from a minority of states-notably Germany, Italy and Spain-who fear such work could antagonise Afghan farmers or put their troops in more danger.

Above all, they want the Afghan government to lead the drug battle.

Russian forces in Georgia appear to begin pullout

AP, Karaleti

Russian forces began the final stage of a pullback from positions outside Georgia's separatist South Ossetia region, bulldozing a camp at a key checkpoint as EU monitors looked on. A Russian general said the withdrawal would be completed Wednesday.

Moscow must withdraw its troops from buffer zones surrounding South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, by Friday under an agreement brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy after Russia's war with Georgia in August.

The pullback may ease tensions somewhat but will not resolve major disputes pitting Russia against Georgia and Western countries, which have condemned Moscow's invasion of the ex-Soviet republic and its recognition of the separatist regions as independent nations.

On Wednesday morning, a small base at the Russian checkpoint in Karaleti was almost completely gone, and Russian solders were sweeping for mines as two bulldozers leveled the site.

A Russian armored personnel carrier blocked the road, which leads north from Georgian-controlled territory toward South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali. But the concrete slabs that had served as a roadblock were gone.

A handful of Russian military trucks stood ready to remove the remaining troops, and four European Union monitors stood by a pair of blue EU light-armored vehicles.

Speaking at the Karaleti checkpoint, the head of Russian peacekeeping troops based in South Ossetia, Maj. Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov, said the withdrawal from all six posts on the edge of the buffer zone was under way and should be finished by day's end.

EU monitors have been patrolling the buffer zone since Oct. 1 under the withdrawal agreement, a supplement to the initial cease-fire Sarkozy brokered on behalf of the EU in August.

The governor of the Georgian region where Karaleti is located, Vladimir Vardezelashvili, said Georgian police would move into the buffer zone as the Russians withdraw. Black-uniformed police with Kalashnikovs stood by, closer to the checkpoint than they had in recent weeks.

Iran forces down Hungarian aircraft

AP, Tehran

Iran forced an aircraft carrying Hungarian military officials to land after it entered its airspace, Hungary's Defense Ministry said Tuesday. The plane was allowed to continue to Afghanistan after it was determined the entry was accidental.

The ministry said the airplane, carrying a four-member Hungarian military delegation, had strayed into Iran's airspace on Sept. 30 because of an "administrative error." "After clearing up the problem, the airplane was able to continue its journey to Afghanistan," the ministry said in a statement released in Budapest. The military personnel were part of a Hungarian team that took over direction of Kabul's international airport this month, it said, adding that they were flying in a civilian Hawker 800 plane rented from the private Hungarian firm JAS Cargoways. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency had initially reported that the plane was American and was carrying five military officials and three civilians from Turkey to Afghanistan when it was forced by the Iranian air force to land at an airport for questioning.

The report prompted a denial from the U.S. military's Central Command, which said in a statement from its headquarters in Doha, Qatar, that no American plane was involved. Later, Iran's official Arabic-language television station, Al-Alam, quoted an unidentified senior Iranian military official as saying the plane belonged either to a British or Hungarian relief agency.

Both Iranian news reports said Iranian officials questioned the passengers and determined that the entry had been accidental, and that the plane was allowed to continue to Afghanistan the following day.