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ANOI: North Korea on Thursday condemned imminent US-South Korea naval exercises as a threat to


world The ˜Manila Times FRIDAY July 23, 2010


North Korea condemns US sanctions H


ating an atmosphere [for dialogue] rather than . . . staging military ex- ercises or imposing sanctions.” The nuclear-armed North has


global peace as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Vietnam for Asia-Pacific security talks.


A spokesman for the North Ko- rean delegation at the talks in Ha- noi also dismissed fresh US sanc- tions against the isolated regime for its alleged sinking of a South Korean warship, saying they violated a United Nations (UN) statement. “Such movements pose a great


Convicts escape from prison guarded by mannequin


BUENOS AIRES: Two men convicted of armed robbery escaped from a prison in south eastern Argentina that was so understaffed it used mannequins to man its watchtowers, prison authorities admitted Wednesday. “I admit we have a type of manne- quin but in this sector there are cameras that enable us to observe all move- ments,” said Daniel Verges, the director of prisons in Neuquen province. The two inmates escaped by climbing


over a wall at Penal Unit 11 in Neuquen. The watchtower guarding the wall was manned by a makeshift doll nicknamed “Wilson,” after the ball that kept a marooned Tom Hanks company in the movie Cast Away, prison officials said. “We made a doll with a ball and a cap so that prisoners would see a shadow and think they were being guarded,” the newspaper Rio Negro quoted a guard as saying. The guard said only two of the prison’s


15 watchtowers have real guards. Local police chief, Juan Carlos Lepen, has


acknowledged that broken cameras and burned-out television monitors have gone unrepaired at the prison for lack of funds. AFP


threat not only to the peace and security of the Korean peninsula but also to global peace and se- curity,” the spokesman, Ri Tong Il, told reporters.


“If the US is truly interested in the denuclearization of the Korean pe- ninsula it must take the lead in cre-


warned of war if it is punished over the sinking of the Cheonan in the Yellow Sea in March with the loss of 46 lives, an incident that has sharply raised tensions on the peninsula. The United States says its immi-


nent naval exercises involving an aircraft carrier, destroyers and thou- sands of troops are meant as a show of “deterrence” against North Ko- rean “aggression.”


Clinton said the sanctions were designed to pile pressure on the


Pyongyang leadership and were not aimed at the North Korean people, “who have suffered too long due to the misguided and malign priorities of their government.”


State Department officials said Clinton would ask Beijing to do more to wring change from its ally North Korea, during bilateral talks with China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Hanoi. The two are expected to meet in Hanoi on Friday on the sidelines of the 27-member Asean Regional Fo- rum (ARF), the Asia-Pacific’s biggest security dialogue.


State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Clinton would


CHONGQING, China: Typhoon Chanthu lashed southern China on Thursday with punishing winds and heavy rain in the latest weather challenge for a country in which flooding has killed 700 people this year. Chanthu made landfall in Guangdong province with winds of up to 126 kilometers an hour , as the nation grapples with its worst flooding in 10 years, which is ex- pected to continue as the typhoon season gains pace. Chanthu’s winds and rain were expected to rake Guangdong, the island province of Hainan and the Guangxi region with “ferocious pre- cipitation,” the China Meteorologi- cal Administration warned. The typhoon made landfall near the city of Wuchuan. State-run tel- evision broadcast images of large waves crashing onto the Guangdong shore and said electricity, telecom- munications and water services were cut in some areas.


Guangdong and Guangxi are among the areas already hit by tor- rential rains and subsequent flood- ing that has killed hundreds over the past several weeks and caused scores of rivers and lakes across the region to reach danger levels. At least 701 people have died from the beginning of the year to July 20, while 347 people re- main missing, vice minister of water resources Liu Ning told re- porters Wednesday.


The Civil Affairs Ministry said three million people have been evacuated.


ask Yang to look at additional steps to pressure North Korea to stop what Clinton called its “destabilizing, illicit and provoca- tive policies.”


Heightened tensions over the sinking of the corvette have further tested already strained relations be- tween Washington and Beijing, which froze military ties with the United States in January over arms sales to Taiwan.


South Korea, the United States and other nations—citing the find- ings of a multinational investiga- tion—have accused the North of sending a submarine to torpedo the ship.


AFP TYPHOON ‘CHANTHU’ LASHES FLOOD-HIT CHINA


Malaysia’s dive sites hit by coral bleaching


KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has closed some of its top dive sites, on the tropical islands of Tioman and Redang, which have been hit by coral bleaching caused by global warming, officials said Thursday. The reefs, which attract some 500,000 tourists annually, will be off- limits to divers and snorkellers until the end of October in an attempt to relieve stress on the fragile marine ecosystems.


“Nine diving sites out of 83 sites


all over the country are closed,” Shahima Abdul Hamid, the Marine Park Department’s director of planning and management, told Agence France-Presse. The closure would give the coral an


opportunity to regenerate and would remove stress caused by tourism- related activities such as diving, the department said. Coral bleaching, which can eventu- ally cause corals to die, occurs when stresses including rising sea tempera- tures disrupt the delicate, symbiotic relationship between the corals and their host organisms. The department’s director-general,


Abdul Jamal Mydin, told reporters that in some areas 60 to 90 percent of the coral had been damaged, and that three entire islands around Tioman in Malaysia’s southeast had been closed. “We are monitoring the extent of


■ A Chinese man stands in floodwaters as two buses make their way along a flooded street in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province. Flooding in China that has killed more than 700 people this year is the deadliest in a decade and looks set to worsen as the country gets deeper into typhoon season. AFP PHOTO


The flooding has intensified amid increasingly wet weather across sev- eral provinces since June. The min- istry has said nearly 500 people have been killed or gone missing since July 1 alone. Liu warned of more misery to come as the typhoon season gets into gear, saying six to eight major typhoons were expected in the com- ing months. The weather administration warned people in Chanthu’s west-


ward-moving path to avoid unnec- essary trips outdoors until the all- clear is given. At least two dozen flights in and out of Hainan’s Haikou city were cancelled Thursday, airport Officials announced. Elsewhere, the weather adminis- tration forecast light to moderate rain for the next three days across parts of China most affected by the recent flooding, including the prov- inces of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hubei,


Anhui and Yunnan. Liu said Wednesday that more than 230 rivers in the country had seen water levels rise beyond warn- ing points, with two dozen exceed- ing historic highs. Tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed in floods and land- slides, and economic losses have hit at least 142 billion yuan ($21 bil- lion), he said. The deaths and dam- age are China’s worst in a decade.


AFP


coral bleaching at all marine parks in the country. In the meantime, we are building artificial reefs and coral transplants,” he was quoted as saying by the Star daily. The Malaysian Nature Society applauded the move to give the reefs a break.


“In Malaysia, corals are facing a


vast variety of threats even without the coral bleaching episodes,” said the society’s head of conservation Yeap Chin Aik. Apart from global warming, “the


other threats are uncontrolled tourism, and land-based threats which result in pollution,” he said.


US resumes ties with Indonesian special forces after 12-year hiatus


JAKARTA: The United States said Thursday it would resume ties with Indonesian special forces after a 12-year hiatus, as part of efforts by Washington to reach out to the world’s largest Muslim nation. The announcement, made during a visit by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Indonesia, comes as Washington seeks to resume training for the Kopassus unit as part of growing anti- insurgency and intelligence cooperation. “We will begin a gradual, measured process of


working with Kopassus,” a senior US defense official said, referring to the elite Indonesian military unit with which Washington suspended ties in 1998. The decision was made “in light of the progress that Indonesia and its military . . . has made in terms of reform and professionalization since the fall of Suharto as well as recent pledges of reform,” he said. The move is controversial as the Kopassus unit has been implicated in human rights abuses, including in East Timor, and some figures in the US Congress have opposed embracing the force before it has accounted for its past. The United States broke off ties with the


Kopassus under a law banning cooperation with foreign troops implicated in rights abuses. The Indonesian special forces are accused of committing abuses in East Timor and Aceh under then dictator Suharto in the 1990s. The senior US defense official played down fears that senior figures in the special forces had


worldinbrief


■ SANAA, Yemen: Twenty people were killed in overnight clashes between Shiite rebels and government-backed tribes in northern Yemen, a tribal source told Agence France-Presse on Thursday.


■ WASHINGTON, D.C.: The United States says its imminent naval exercises with South Korea are “defensive” in nature and meant as a clear show of “deterrence” in the face of North Korean “aggression.”


■ SUVA: Fiji’s military regime holds a hastily arranged Pacific summit and claims a diplomatic coup over Australia, which lobbied to have the original gathering cancelled.


■ MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan; Women living in Afghanistan’s safest region are retreating behind the veil amid fears they are being stalked by a resurgent Taliban determined to trample their rights.


been implicated in past rights violations. “Individuals who had been convicted in the past for human rights violations have in the past several months been removed from Kopassus,” he said. The administration of President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, sees the country as an increasingly important player in East Asia and key ally in the Muslim world. Gates, who arrived from a visit to Seoul, was due to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro on Thursday. Ernie Bower, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Obama administration needed to handle its relationship with the Indonesian military carefully. “I think it’s the view of the Indonesian military that without the ability to engage and train Kopassus, the American engagement and normalization of the military-to-military relationship would be incomplete,” he said. “If you don’t have the relationship with the Indonesian military normalized, you can’t really participate and be the leading partner in this architecture,” he added. “Gates needs to get it right with Indonesia.” However, the Pentagon needs to find an acceptable compromise to seal the deal without encountering too many objections in Washington. AFP


■ CHICAGO: A federal judged ordered the release Wednesday (Thursday in Manila) of disgraced media tycoon Conrad Black on an unsecured $2 million bond as he appeals his 2007 fraud conviction.


■ BURAS, Louisiana: As the Gulf oil spill destroys livelihoods in southern Louisiana, anxiety over an uncertain future prompts a rise in depression, health officials and residents warn.


■ VIENNA, Austria: The criminalization of sex workers, drug users and men who have sex with men were highlighted as major sources of concern in the fight against HIV in Asia, at the world AIDS conference here Wednesday.


■ HANOI: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Vietnam on Thursday for Asia-Pacific security talks involving China and North Korea amid tensions over the sinking of a South Korean warship.


AFP


AFP


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