North Korea warns of retaliation

North Korea has been angered by tougher UN sanctions

North Korea has threatened a "thousand-fold" military retaliation against the US and its allies if it is provoked.

The warning, carried by state media, came after US President Barack Obama said that a nuclear-armed North Korea posed a "grave threat" to the world.

At a news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Mr Obama said the US would "vigorously" pursue an end to North Korea's nuclear programme.

North Korea has recently conducted nuclear and missile tests.

"If the US and its followers infringe upon our republic's sovereignty even a bit, our military and people will launch a one hundred- or one thousand-fold retaliation with merciless military strike," said a commentary published by state news agency KCNA.

"The nuclear programme is not the monopoly of the US," it said.

Money withdrawn

The commentary is the latest threat from Pyongyang as tensions in the region have escalated over its 25 May underground nuclear test and recent missile launches.

Japanese and South Korean media reported that there were signs of two long-range missile launch sites being readied - one on the north-west coast and the other on the north-east coast.

It was previously believed a launch might come from the north-west site, not far from the Chinese border.

President Obama: "We have continually insisted that North Korea denuclearize'

North Korea is also withdrawing funds from its bank accounts in the Chinese territory of Macau and elsewhere before they can be frozen by new UN sanctions, according to South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo newspaper.

On 12 June the UN Security Council approved tougher sanctions against North Korea, including inspections of ships suspected of taking banned cargo to and from North Korea, a wider ban on arms sales and further measures to cut Pyongyang's access to international financial services.

Following the resolution, the North said it would start enriching uranium and use all its plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Japan has taken action by banning all trade with North Korea. Pyongyang's main ally, China, said it would "earnestly implement" the new sanctions.

'Break cycle'

At a summit in Washington on Tuesday, Mr Obama said that he and his South Korean counterpart had agreed that a new UN resolution designed to halt North Korea's nuclear ambitions should be fully enforced.

"Under no circumstance are we going to allow North Korea to possess nuclear weapons," said Mr Lee.

And he pledged to end a cycle of letting North Korea create a crisis in order to be rewarded with concessions from the international community.

"This is a pattern they've come to expect," Mr Obama said.

"We are going to break that pattern."

India, Pakistan set talks ball rolling

THAW IN TIES: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari at a meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on Tuesday.

Yekaterinburg: Terrorism was the “primary issue” six months ago when India suspended high-level interaction with Pakistan and remains so today. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh broke the dialogue logjam on Tuesday, meeting President Asif Ali Zardari on the sidelines of the SCO summit here and agreeing that their Foreign Secretaries should discuss the T-word so that the two leaders could decide how to take the bilateral relationship forward when they meet again mid-July at the Nonaligned summit in Egypt.

With one eye presumably focused on those back home who might see the resumption of contact with Islamabad as a softening of India’s stand, Dr. Singh began what was meant to be a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Zardari in the full glare of the media which had gathered to capture the ‘photo-op.’ “I am very happy to meet you,” he told the Pakistani President after the two delegations had greeted each other and reporters, including this one, were still in the room clicking away.

“But I must tell you quite frankly that I have come with the limited mandate of discussing how Pakistan can deliver on its assurances that its territory would not be used for terrorist attacks on India.”

The message duly noted by the media, officials from both sides rushed to clear the room, leaving the two principals alone for their private interaction without note takers. “The Prime Minister does not do anything by chance,” a senior Indian official told The Hindu when asked if this departure from protocol was by design or happenstance.

Whatever its impact on domestic public opinion, Dr. Singh’s “public” airing of Indian concerns runs the risk of making Mr. Zardari’s life back home more difficult, though Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmud Qureshi took the awkwardness of the moment in his stride.

Asked whether he felt Dr. Singh’s remarks were acerbic, he told reporters he did not think so. “We all agree that we should condemn terrorism and fight against it, no matter where it comes from,” he said, adding, “Be it from India, Pakistan, Britain or Africa.”

In a statement issued after the meeting, Mr. Zardari’s spokesperson, Farhatullah Babar, said the “stalled peace process [had] got a fresh lease of life.” He omitted any reference to terrorism in describing the mandate of the proposed Foreign Secretary talks but said the Pakistani President had “reiterated the desire of [his] government to cooperate with India in bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice.”

Briefing the media about the 40-minute long meeting, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said the two leaders reviewed the bilateral relationship which “remains under considerable stress, the primary cause of which is the terrorist attacks on India from Pakistani territory.”

Tamil Tiger doubt over leader's demise

At first glance, the admission by the LTTE's head of international relations, Selvarasa Padmanathan, that their supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is dead might seem like the Tamil Tigers simply bowing to the inevitable. Without mentioning Prabhakaran by name, he said in his written statement that "our incomparable leader and supreme commander… attained martyrdom" fighting what he called the "military oppression of the Sri Lankan Government… In spite of the numerous pleas from his senior commanders, he refused to leave his people and along with his fellow freedom fighters perished in combat with the Sri Lankan forces."
At the same time, in an exclusive interview with the BBC Tamil Service, Mr Padmanathan said that after three decades of violent insurrection, the LTTE had given up violence and would "enter a democratic process" to achieve self-determination for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But then came the counter-statements - and they, too, purported to be from the LTTE. The pro-LTTE website, tamilnet.com, quoted the Tigers' intelligence department as saying that the movement's leadership was safe and would "re-emerge when the right time comes".
There was more. It cited the LTTE's Department for Diaspora Affairs, DDA, as saying "it would not comment without explicit authorisation from the LTTE leadership".
The problem is that those leaders are believed to be mainly dead. The head of the intelligence department, Pottu Amman, has been missing since the final days of fighting a week ago.
The DDA is completely unheard of, according to seasoned Sri Lanka-watchers - although many among the Tamil diaspora spread across numerous countries do indeed refuse to believe that Prabhakaran has perished. Nevertheless, it appears that a fissure may be opening up within the ranks of LTTE supporters after the apparent death - a split over whether to acknowledge Prabhakaran's death, and on how to proceed. The ambiguities surrounding his death were added to by the government and the army here. State television announced his death on Monday last week. But by that night, although the army chief was saying his body was among hundreds found, the military spokesman was saying there was no confirmation. Only on Tuesday was footage broadcast which, it was claimed, showed the guerrilla leader's body. The authorities gave varying accounts of how and when he died, including that he and two senior colleagues were trying to flee by ambulance and were ambushed, or that he was found dead near the lagoon bordering the combat zone. In due course, they said DNA samples had been taken for tests to confirm that the body was Prabhakaran's - but not long after that, the army chief said the authorities had cremated the body and scattered his ashes in the sea. The hurried cremation and varying accounts of what happened may foster further conspiracy theories. Even before the cremation was announced, and despite the body being publicly identified by LTTE defector and minister Vinayagamurthy Muralitharan ("Colonel Karuna"), one Tamil parliamentarian was saying he doubted it was really Prabhakaran. It may be that the two nascent streams of reaction to the news of his death will crystallise into something more solid. One is Mr Padmanathan's approach - to acknowledge the death and continue some form of struggle for Tamil rights - according to his interview, within a democratic framework. The other - aired on tamilnet.com - is not to acknowledge that Prabhakaran was killed by the Sri Lankan military, and to perpetuate the idea that he is somehow invincible. The question, then, would be which will hold sway.
One expert, who prefers to remain anonymous, says Mr Padmanathan is by far the most senior surviving LTTE official as so many of the other leaders, as well as more junior fighters, were killed. He is widely believed to be the same man as Kumaran Pathmanathan, who for years was the LTTE's chief arms procurer. Given his seniority, his acknowledgement of Prabhakaran's death might in due course take a firmer hold. So, too, might his message of giving up violence. Another expert, also speaking anonymously, believes future attacks, such as bombings, cannot be ruled out within Sri Lanka because there may still be sleeper cells of trained LTTE members waiting to strike. In any case, the government is taking a firm line on the Tigers.
Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has told the BBC that he rejects their offer to take up democratic politics as he does not believe they can do this after years of violent activities.
According to the Sri Lankan Daily Mirror newspaper, the government has sought Interpol's assistance in locating and arresting Mr Padmanathan. And the army chief, General Sarath Fonseka, has told state television that despite the end of the war, he wants to raise the army's strength by 50%, from 200,000 to 300,000, in order to prevent any LTTE revival.

UN pressures Sri Lanka over aid

The United Nations is urging Sri Lanka to ensure aid reaches around 300,000 people displaced in the final stages of its civil war. The appeal comes amid concerns from agencies who say they are not being granted access. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it has been barred from visiting some camps in Sri Lanka to check on the conditions of hundreds of thousands of people. "It's quite clear that relief activities need to be increased," Jakob Kellenberger, the ICRC president, said. Mahinda Samarasinghe, Sri Lanka's minister of disaster management and rights, told a special session of the 47-member UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday that his government would help those displaced. But he dismissed concerns raised by the ICRC and other aid agencies who have been kept out of some camps, including Manik Farm, which holds around 210,000 people.
"Access of course we will provide. And we have been doing so. And we intend to continue with it," Samarasinghe said. The UNHRC session brushed aside calls to investigate allegations of war crimes by both sides in the final chapter of the fighting.Sri Lanka's allies on the council, including China, Cuba and Egypt, forced through a resolution with 29 votes to 12 against and six abstentions. The resolution condemned the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for using civilians as human shields and stressed that the war was a "domestic" matter that didn't warrant outside interference. Western officials expressed dismay at the council's resolution.
Dante Martinelli, the Swiss representative, criticised the "worrying absence" and "significant gaps" in the text. He noted that the text failed to make explicit reference to granting humanitarian groups "rapid access" to people displaced by the fighting. The UNHRC has no enforcement power, but countries generally fight doggedly to avoid criticism and the negative attention that its resolutions bring. Samarasinghe earlier said his government was sick and tired of foreign pressure. "There is no reason for a probe. These are political statements made by various people," he told the AFP news agency. But Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, told Al Jazeera it was a "reasonable call since very little information came to the world with the international media having been denied access into Sri Lanka.
"The information regarding the Sri Lankan conflict may come in bits and pieces but I think it will come out necessarily because there is a need to ensure justice for the victims and survivors there," she said on Wednesday. Her comments came as the Sri Lankan government announced that it will maintain its state of emergency, which allows it to make arrests and seize evidence without warrants, despite the defeat of the separatist Tamil Tigers. Nimal Siripala, Sri Lanka's health minister, said the order would remain in place to prevent a resurgence of the LTTE. Last week the government declared an end to its 26-year war against the Tamil Tigers after killing its leaders. Under the state of emergency, police can arrest, enter homes and seize evidence without warrants and hold those they arrest for 18 months without trial.
The government said it suspects that suicide bombers remain in the capital Colombo and have adopted a low profile.
Veerasingham Anandasangaree, a Tamil politician, said it was unfair to keep the emergency powers in place, since most of the Tamil people "gave full support to the army to liberate them. If they are treated in this manner, there is no justice at all".
On Wednesday, Sri Lankan soldiers on a mission to flush out remnants of the LTTE killed 11 suspected fighters in jungles in the east of the country, the military said, in the largest clash since the army declared victory.