The Star Online: World Updates
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- Obama walks a fine line with Myanmar president's landmark visit
- Militants kill 10 Iraq policemen in checkpoint attacks
- Hezbollah steps up Syria battle, Israel threatens more strikes
| Obama walks a fine line with Myanmar president's landmark visit Posted: 19 May 2013 04:09 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will walk a fine line between fostering a U.S. ally in China's backyard and trying to defend human rights when the president of Myanmar becomes the first head of his country to visit the White House in 47 years on Monday.
Rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers fear Obama has moved too quickly since forging a dramatic breakthrough in relations in 2011 after half a century of military rule in Myanmar, also known as Burma. U.S. officials argue that reforms by President Thein Sein's quasi-military government - freeing democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and hundreds of political prisoners, scrapping censorship, legalizing trade unions and protests - are transformative and deserve support from Obama, who confirmed the end of Myanmar's pariah status with the West with a landmark visit last November. However, ethnic or sectarian violence, particularly in the western state of Rakhine, has worsened since Washington started easing sanctions, and a Reuters special report published last week found apartheid-like policies segregating minority Muslims in prison-like ghettos there. At least 192 people died last year in violence between ethnic Buddhists in Rakhine and Rohingya Muslims, who are denied citizenship by Myanmar. Most of the victims, and the 140,000 people made homeless in the attacks, were Muslims. The Myanmar government's rights record has long been poor, especially in resource-rich areas inhabited by ethnic Shans, Karens and Kachins. The Washington-based U.S. Campaign for Burma says 1,100 ethnic Rohingya and 200-250 Kachin have become political detainees in the past year, and the situation has led some to question how far Washington should go in its policy shift. "When they abuse ethnic minorities, it really undercuts their credibility and undermines our ability to work with them," said Republican Representative Trent Franks, one of a group of U.S. lawmakers arguing for lifting U.S. sanctions more slowly. Obama administration officials believe that to deepen and sustain the reforms, Thein Sein has to be able to demonstrate tangible benefits to overcome opposition from powerful military leaders. To back that, Washington has narrowed the scope of its ban on business dealings with Myanmar officials and businessmen. "Yes, there is still more work to do but ... the progress they have made has been significant and they have put in place an ambitious reform agenda and we encourage them to keep doing more," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday, after Myanmar freed 23 political prisoners. On Monday, the two countries are expected to announce plans to work out a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement that would lead to regular talks on boosting trade, labour standards and investment, a business leader familiar with the issue said. STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE Even critics in Congress of Obama's Myanmar policy support the U.S. strategic goal of bringing Myanmar, a nation of 60 million people tucked between China and India, out of its isolation from the West. The long U.S.-Myanmar estrangement was a drag on America's relations with ASEAN, the 10 nation Southeast Asian regional grouping that looks to Washington as a counterbalance to the more assertive China of recent years. Ernest Bower, senior adviser for Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said improving relations with Myanmar fits into the wider U.S. policy of revitalizing its Asia-Pacific relationships. "Myanmar is the keystone state that links China, Southeast Asia and India, and if we didn't get it right, we wouldn't be able to play the chess game that is required in order to deal with China," he said. But the concerns about rights abuses are holding back a fuller U.S. embrace of Thein Sein, a retired general, who was taken off the U.S. Treasury Department's Specially Designated Nationals visa blacklist last year to facilitate engagement. Thein Sein was a close confidante of former military ruler Than Shwe, who ran Myanmar for 19 years, a period that saw mass jailing of opponents, the gunning down of pro-democracy protesters and widespread abuses in ethnic minority areas. Jennifer Quigley, head of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, said that even without the killings in Rakhine, the Myanmar military's heavy hand in forced land seizures and corrupt trade in natural resources in Kachin and other states in multi-ethnic Myanmar should give Western countries pause. Myanmar's most coveted resources - natural gas, minerals, gems and timber - lie in ethnic areas that have been war zones for decades and remain largely untouched by reforms, she said. "Our biggest concern about welcoming Thein Sein to the White House is that it reinforces this positive impression of him and of what is going on in Burma, while we have serious misgivings that he is not interested in pursuing critical reforms," said Quigley. The military has run Myanmar since a 1962 coup by Ne Win, whose 1966 visit to Washington at the invitation of President Lyndon Johnson was the last such visit by the country's head of state. The European Union has moved faster than the United States on Myanmar, lifting its last sanctions on trade, the economy and individuals last month, although it retains an arms embargo. Earlier this month, Obama scrapped a ban on U.S. entry visas to Myanmar's military rulers and their associates but kept sanctions on investing or doing business with figures involved in repression since the mid-1990s. Franks and Democratic U.S. congressman Rush Holt are using budget legislation to press the Obama administration to hold back on expanding nascent U.S. military ties with Myanmar's armed forces until the country stops abuses of ethnic groups and enacts reforms to reduce the military's huge role in the economy. "The Burmese military is the historic perpetrator of human rights abuses, and, one may presume, also the current perpetrator, so sanctions against them should be the last to go," said Holt. (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Editing by Alistair Bell) Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Militants kill 10 Iraq policemen in checkpoint attacks Posted: 19 May 2013 03:29 PM PDT RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - - Militants killed at least 10 Iraqi policemen in a series of attacks on checkpoints in the West of the country on Sunday, police and local officials said. Sectarian tensions in Iraq have been amplified by the conflict in neighbouring Syria, where mostly Sunni rebels are fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad who is backed by Shi'ite Iran. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Iraqi attacks, but Sunni militant groups have previously targeted security forces in a campaign to destabilize the Baghdad government, which they reject as illegitimate. Seven policemen were killed when militants attacked checkpoints and patrols near the western town of Haditha, 190 km (120 miles) northwest of Baghdad, police sources said. "We were manning a checkpoint when suddenly a group of militants in many vehicles surrounded us and opened fire. Seven of my colleagues were killed instantly," said a policeman at the site. In Rawa, 260 km (160 miles) northwest of Baghdad, gunmen attacked police checkpoints, the house of a member of the provincial council and a police chief's residence, killing three policemen and wounding two others, police sources said. The attacks took place in the Sunni heartland of Anbar, where gunmen on Saturday ambushed and kidnapped 10 policemen near the provincial capital of Ramadi, and four members of a government-backed Sunni militia fighters were killed near Falluja city. When Sunni-Shi'ite bloodshed was at its height in 2006-07, Anbar, which shares a border with Syria, was in the grip of al Qaeda's local affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, which has regained strength in recent months. Minority Sunnis, embittered by Shi'ite dominance since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U.S.-led forces in 2003, have been staging street protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki since December. A bloody government raid on a Sunni protest camp in Hawija last month ignited a surge of violence. Monthly death tolls are well below those of 2006-07, when they sometimes topped 3,000, but more than 700 were killed in April by a U.N. count, the highest figure in almost five years. (Reporting by Kamal Naama; Writing by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Hezbollah steps up Syria battle, Israel threatens more strikes Posted: 19 May 2013 03:11 PM PDT AMMAN (Reuters) - Lebanese Hezbollah militants attacked a Syrian rebel-held town alongside Syrian troops on Sunday and Israel threatened more attacks on Syria to rein the militia in, highlighting the risks of a wider regional conflict if planned peace talks fail.
Activists said it was the fiercest fighting in Syria's two year-old civil war involving Hezbollah, a Shi'ite group backed by Iran which they said appeared to be helping President Bashar al-Assad secure a vital corridor in case Syria fragments. Speaking from Qusair near the border with Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, activist Hadi Abdallah said Syrian warplanes bombed the town in the morning and shells were hitting the town at a rate of up to 50 a minute. At least 52 people were killed. "The army is hitting Qusair with tanks and artillery from the north and east while Hezbollah is firing mortar rounds and multiple rocket launchers from the south and west," he said. Assad poured scorn on the idea that a U.S.- and Russian-sponsored peace conference planned for Geneva next month would end fighting that is deepening the sectarian fault lines between Sunnis against Shi'ites across the Middle East. "They think a political conference will halt terrorists in the country. That is unrealistic," he told the Argentine newspaper Clarin, in reference to the mainly Sunni groups seeking to unseat him. Assad declared "No dialogue with terrorists", but it was not clear from his remarks whether he would agree to send delegates to a conference that may falter before it starts due to disagreements between its two main sponsors and their allies. The opposition will agree its stance on the proposed peace conference in a meeting due to start in Istanbul on Thursday, during which it will also appoint a new leadership. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was "preparing for every scenario" in Syria and held out the prospect of more Israeli strikes inside Syria to stop Hezbollah and other opponents of Israel getting advanced weapons. "We will act to ensure the security interest of Israel's citizens in the future as well," Netanyahu said. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied reports that it attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near Damascus this month that it believed were awaiting delivery to Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is allied with Assad. REBELS UNDER PRESSURE Attacks by troops and militias loyal to Assad, who inherited power in Syria from his father in 2000, have put rebel brigades under pressure in several of their strongholds across the majority-Sunni country of 21 million people. In one attempt to strike back, opposition sources said rebel fighters had abducted the father of Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad in the province of Deraa, one of many tit-for-tat kidnappings being carried on by both sides. "Mekdad's nephew was taken before, and exchanged for Free Syrian Army (rebel) prisoners. The speculation is that a similar deal will be struck for his father," said activist Al-Mutassem Billah of the opposition Sham News Network. In the fighting near Lebanon, rebel fighters clashed with mechanised Syrian army units and Hezbollah guerrillas in nine points in and around Qusair, 10 km (six miles) from the border, activists said. The region is needed by Assad, who is from the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, to secure a route from Hezbollah's strongholds in the Bekaa to areas near Syria's Mediterranean coast where many Alawites live, they said. Opposition sources say Syria's coastal region could serve as an Alawite statelet if Assad should lose control of Damascus, a potential fragmentation of Syria along ethnic and sectarian lines that raises the prospect of many more deaths. Sources in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley said shells fired by rebels had hit the edges of the town of Hermel, a Hezbollah stronghold, but no casualties were reported. Syrian Television said troops "leading an operation against terrorists in Qusair" had reached the town centre. "Our heroic forces are advancing toward Qusair and are chasing the remnants of the terrorists and have hoisted the Syrian flag on the municipality building. In the next few hours we will give you joyous news," the television said. But al-Siddiq Brigade, one of several Islamist units defending Qusair, including the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, said in a statement that attempts to storm the town had failed and that 45 government troops and Hezbollah guerrillas had been killed in the battles. Abu Imad, another activist in the Qusair region, said the rebel grip was tenuous but the army was far from in control. "If Qusair falls, it will be a big problem because the regime will be in control of most of the countryside south of the city of Homs and the rebel forces holding Old Homs will be squeezed," he said. The United Nations says at least 80,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which started with peaceful protests against four decades of rule by Assad and his late father.
Copyright © 2013 Reuters |
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