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news without borders
Two Koreas end rare talks
after just 22 minutes
SEOUL: Rare talks between North and
South Korea ended without agreement
late yesterday after just 22 minutes,
Seoul’s unification ministry said.
A spokesman had no immediate
details on what happened at the talks,
which had been delayed for some 12
hours by procedural disputes.
The meeting at the Kaesong joint
industrial estate just north of the heav-
ily fortified border was the first formal
one since a conservative government
took office in Seoul 14 months ago.
Relations are at their worst in a
decade after President Lee Myung-Bak
abandoned his predecessors’ policy of
providing almost unconditional aid to
the communist state.
Regional tensions are also rising
after the North’s purported satellite
launch on April 5, widely seen over-
seas as a disguised missile test.
The North, angry at UN censure
of the launch, has announced it is
quitting nuclear disarmament talks
and restarting its atomic weapons
programme. It has expelled US and
UN nuclear inspectors.
In yesterday’s talks the seven-
member Seoul delegation was seeking
access to a South Korean worker being
held by the North at Kaesong for alleg-
edly criticising its political system.
Thai state of emergency to
be extended by new rally
BANGKOK: A fresh rally planned by
anti-government protesters will pro-
long a state of emergency in Thailand’s
capital Bangkok and surrounding areas,
a government minister said yesterday.
Supporters of ousted premier
Thaksin Shinawatra have announced
they will regroup on Saturday outside
the emergency zone after rallies in
Bangkok ended last week following
street battles between demonstrators
and armed soldiers.
But Satit Wonghnongtaey, the minis-
ter attached to the prime minister’s of-
fice, said the protests in Samut Sakhon
province, 36km outside Bangkok would
worsen the kingdom’s political chaos.
“The government is ready to deal
with any chaos but the rally will affect
the government’s decision when to lift
The North gave no indication of
what it wanted to discuss when it
proposed the meeting last week.
It only said it had an “important no-
tice” to announce regarding the Seoul-
funded Kaesong estate, built as a symbol
of reconciliation between two countries,
which have remained technically at war
since their 1950-53 conflict.
Pyongyang is angry at Seoul’s an-
nounced intention to join a US-led
initiative against shipments of weap-
ons of mass destruction.
It says any move by its neighbour
to join the Proliferation Security
Initiative (PSI) would be seen as a
declaration of war.
“The Lee group of traitors should
never forget that Seoul is just 50km
away” from the border, the North’s
military spokesman said Saturday, sug-
gesting the city is vulnerable to attack.
Analysts believed the North would
try to force the South to choose be-
tween PSI and the future of Kaesong,
using the detainee as a bargaining
chip.
Cho Bong-Hyun, an analyst with
South Korean bank IBK, said the North
would likely bring charges against
the detainee to raise tensions and may
even demand that all South Korean
workers quit the joint venture. – AFP
the state of emergency,” Satit said.
“This is bad news for our country
because it will worsen the crisis.
They should rely on parliament as the
government is implementing charter
amendments as demanded by the
protesters,” he said.
On Monday Jakrapob Penkair, a
senior member of the so-called “Red
Shirt” protest movement loyal to fugi-
tive Thaksin, said that the group would
continue their campaign against Prime
Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
“We have developed some strate-
gies,” said Jakrapobn. The Red Shirts
shut down an Asian summit in Pattaya
on April 11 and then clashed with
troops in Bangkok on Monday. Two
people were killed and 123 injured in
the unrest in the capital. – AFP
Sri Lanka troops move in
on Tigers, 52,000 flee
Tamil civilians
in the No Fire COLOMBO: Sri Lankan
Zone arrive soldiers battled into the last
into military redoubt of the Tamil Tigers
controlled yesterday, and an exodus of
areas after people trapped by the rebels
troops overran in the coastal strip hit 52,000,
the last the military said.
earth bund
obstructing
The operation gathered
speed after the military’s
their path at noon (2.30pm in Malaysia)
Puthumattalan deadline for the Libera-
in Mullaitivu. tion Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) to surrender passed
without any word from the
separatists, in what appears
to be the final act in Asia’s
longest-running war.
The LTTE hours later
vowed no surrender despite
being massively outgunned
by a military built up to wipe
them out.
“LTTE will never surren-
der and we will fight and we
have the confidence that we
will win with the help of the
Tamil people,” Seevaratnam
Puleedevan, secretary-general
of the LTTE peace secretariat,
told Reuters by telephone.
The International Com-
mittee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) warned the situa-
tion was “nothing short of
catastrophic” and urged both
sides to prevent further mass
Obama gets euphoric CIA
welcome despite terror revelations
LANGLEY (Virginia): Presi-
dent Barack Obama heaped
praise on the CIA on Monday,
vowing his “full support” and
telling employees not to be
discouraged by his release
of stunning details on the
agency’s harsh terror inter-
rogations.
The president reassured
the embattled spies at their
Virginia headquarters amid
a heated controversy over
his release of secret memos
detailing Bush-era inter-
rogations of terror suspects
denounced as torture by
critics.
If there were hard feel-
ings, they weren’t on public
display at the Central Intel-
ligence Agency.
Hundreds of agency
employees packed the lobby
of the original headquarters
building to hear Obama
and exploded in cheers and
applause when he strode
theSun
EPAPIX
casualties among civilians,
saying hundreds had been
killed in the past 48 hours.
The neutral agency did not
assign blame to either side.
Sri Lanka’s military, in
what it dubbed the world’s
largest hostage rescue op-
eration, moved in to keep the
stream of people moving and
give troops a clear shot at the
LTTE and its elusive leader
Vellupillai Prabhakaran.
“The number of people
is up to 52,000 and we
have reached the beach,”
military spokesman Udaya
Nanayakkara said, indicating
troops had cut the Tiger’s last
remaining area in half.
He denied civilians were
being harmed. The Tigers’
Puleedevan said Prabhaka-
ran, the 54-year-old guerrilla
who since the 1970s has sin-
gle-mindedly led a fight for
a separate nation for Tamils
– which became full-blown
war in 1983 – was directing
the fight in what the army had
set up as a no-fire zone, but is
now a last battleground.
After the conventional
end of the war, Sri Lanka will
face the challenges of healing
divisions between the Tamil
in with CIA director Leon
Panetta.
“Don’t be discouraged by
what’s happened the last few
weeks. Don’t be discouraged
that we have to acknowledge
potentially we have made
some mistakes – that’s how
we learn,” Obama said.
“But the fact that we are
willing to acknowledge them
and then move forward, that
is precisely why I am proud
to be president of the United
States and that’s why you
should be proud to be mem-
bers of the CIA.”
Obama’s visit coincided
with fresh revelations about
the repeated use of water-
boarding, or near drowning,
on up to 266 occasions by
CIA interrogators against two
top Al Qaeda terror suspects.
Last week, the president
released a series of Justice
Department memos detailing
harsh techniques, including
| WEDNESDAY APRIL 22 2009
minority and Sinhalese
majority, and boosting an
economy suffering on many
fronts including a weakening
rupee.
The United Nations and
Western governments have
urged the military to renew
a brief truce to negotiate
the civilians’ exit, a plea the
government has rejected on
the grounds the Tigers have
dismissed all entreaties to let
the people out.
Sri Lankan President Ma-
hinda Rajapaksa also again
turned down Britain’s attempt
to send a special envoy and
ruled out any pause in mili-
tary action during a phone
call with Prime Minister
Gordon Brown on Monday,
the president’s office said.
“President Rajapaksa
observed that this movement
of civilians had evoked a
completely new situation and
he had instructed that addi-
tional consignments of food,
medicine and other essentials
be dispatched,” a statement
released yesterday said.
Puleedevan, the LTTE
peace secretariat head, again
urged a permanent ceasefire
and accused the government
of killing 1,000 people and
wounding 2,000 on Monday
via shelling.
The government has
denied that and accuses
the Tigers of creating a
humanitarian crisis to build
international pressure for a
ceasefire to try and rearm, as
they have done in the past.
The Red Cross said it
feared the operation could
lead to a drastic increase in
the number of casualties.
“The situation is nothing
short of catastrophic. Ongo-
ing fighting has killed or
wounded hundreds of civil-
ians who have only minimal
access to medical care,” it
said in a statement – Reuters
waterboarding, sleep depri-
vation and even a proposal
to use insects to frighten a
detainee, endorsed by the
previous administration of
George W. Bush.
The move, which came
in response to a court order,
exposed Obama to fierce
attacks from across the politi-
cal spectrum.
Former Bush administra-
tion officials warned he had
tied the hands of the agency
for the future, damaged
individual agents who car-
ried out the questioning or
offered a propaganda tool to
US enemies.
Human rights groups
were furious that Obama
simultaneously ruled out
prosecutions of CIA opera-
tives who carried out inter-
rogations viewed as torture,
by reasoning that they were
acting on orders to defend
their country. – AFP