Suu Kyi’s party complains of campaign restrictions

Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party said Monday that campaign restrictions threatened the fairness of by-elections seen as a key test of the regime’s reform credentials.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner’s National League for Democracy (NLD) called a news conference to complain that it was being denied the use of sports grounds to hold rallies ahead of the closely watched April 1 vote.

“We are facing many difficulties in our campaign,” said party spokesman and campaign manager Nyan Win. “If this situation doesn’t change, we will not believe the coming election is fair.”

Suu Kyi, whose party boycotted a 2010 election because it thought the rules were unfair, is standing for a seat in parliament for the first time.

The 2010 vote, which swept the army’s political allies to power, was marred by widespread complaints of cheating and intimidation.

The opposition cannot threaten the ruling party’s majority even if it takes all 48 available seats in the by-elections, but a Suu Kyi win would lend legitimacy to the fledgling parliament.

“We want to compete fairly,” Nyan Win said. “To get a fair play, we will make calls on the Union Election Commission or the government whenever it’s needed.”

The NLD party won a landslide victory in an election in 1990, but the then-ruling junta never allowed the party to take power.

Suu Kyi was under house arrest at the time. She was released from her latest stint in detention a few days after the 2010 vote.

The democracy icon has drawn crowds of tens of thousands of cheering supporters on the campaign trail, posing a security headache for her party.

Earlier this month she postponed a trip to the central city of Mandalay because her party said the venue offered by the authorities was too small.

The NLD said it had also been denied permission to use a venue in northern Kachin State for a planned speech by Suu Kyi later this week.

Her decision to stand for a seat in parliament is the latest sign of dramatic change taking place in the country formerly known as Burma after the end last year of nearly half a century of outright military rule.

The regime has surprised observers with reforms including welcoming the NLD back into the political mainstream, signing ceasefire deals with ethnic minority rebels and releasing hundreds of political prisoners.

The new military-backed government, which is dominated by former generals, assured visiting top EU officials last week that the vote would be democratic.

Western nations are now considering further easing sanctions, adding to hopes of an end to decades of isolation, but controversy surrounding the 2010 vote means the upcoming by-elections will be heavily scrutinised.

The United States has also expressed concern about the recent brief detention of the prominent Buddhist monk Gambira, one of the leaders of a failed 2007 uprising, less than a month after he was freed from jail.

Myanmar state media said Sunday that Gambira faced charges of illegally occupying one monastery in Yangon and breaking into two others.

Party to meet to rally behind new N.Korea leader

North Korea said its ruling party will hold a rare special conference in April, in an apparent attempt to quickly wrap up the power transfer to new national leader Kim Jong-Un.

The young and untested Jong-Un took power when his father, longtime leader Kim Jong-Il, died in December from a heart attack.

The son has been proclaimed the “great successor” but has so far been formally appointed to only one of the late Kim’s posts, commander-in-chief of the 1.2 million-member military.

The conference will “glorify the sacred revolutionary life and feats of Kim Jong-Il for all ages and accomplish the Juche cause, the Songun revolutionary cause, rallied close around Kim Jong-Un”, the official news agency said on Monday.

Juche, or self-reliance, is the nation’s official ideology. The Songun, or military-first, policy prioritises troops’ welfare over civilians.

The meeting will be held in mid-April, close to the 100th anniversary of the birth of late founding president Kim Il-Sung — the original member of the dynasty which has ruled since 1948.

North Korea has selected the anniversary as the start of a new era when the impoverished nation becomes a “powerful and prosperous” state.

The North last held a party conference in September 2010, its biggest political meeting for 30 years.

That meeting appointed Jong-Un as vice-chairman of the party’s central military commission in preparation for the eventual handover of power.

The April meeting is very likely to appoint Jong-Un to his father’s old post of party general secretary and also as chief of its military commission, said Paik Hak-Soon of South Korea’s Sejong Institute think-tank.

The former leader also headed the all-powerful National Defence Commission (NDC), a non-party body.

Paik said it was unclear whether Jong-Un would leave the NDC post vacant forever in memory of Kim Jong-Il, in the same way Jong-Il reserved the position of state president for his own late father.

“But that’s not important,” he told AFP. “What’s important is that Jong-Un will be firmly in power with all the necessary top titles under his belt, probably by the end of April.”

Cheong Seong-Chang, also with with the Sejong Institute, said the decision to hold an April meeting “signals that the North is determined to quickly wrap up the power transfer to Jong-Un, unlike the lengthy power succession of Kim Jong-Il”.

He said the North is also likely to schedule a meeting of its legislature in early April.

Cheong said Kim Jong-Il may be declared “eternal NDC chairman”, with Jong-Un taking over a new title at the top of the state organisation.

“So Jong-Un…will likely be given the top state position in early April before being appointed as party secretary in the party conference in mid-April,” Cheong said in a commentary.

“It means he will assume the top positions in the party, the state and the military, completely wrapping up the whole power transfer.”

The analyst also said some of the party old guard could step down, with relatively young officials promoted to senior posts and changes in party policies.

Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on arrival that he was “optimistic” of a deal and IMF chief Christine Lagarde praised Athens’ “great efforts” to overhaul its economy.

But hardline Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees De Jager demanded the EU and IMF take “permanent” control of government decision-making over revenues and public expenditure in Greece.

De Jager said partners committed to providing Greece money for years to come need “some kind of permanent presence” dictating policy on the ground.

At stake in the rescue of Greece is a writedown of privately-held government debt worth 100 billion euros as well as guarantees and loans eventually adding up to another 130 billion euros.

Thailand issues warrant for fifth bomb suspect

A court in Thailand has issued an arrest warrant for a fifth Iranian suspected of involvement in an alleged plot to kill Israeli diplomats in Bangkok, police said Monday.

The suspect, named as 57-year-old Norouzi Shaya Ali Akbar, faces charges of possessing and making explosives, said deputy national police chief Pansiri Prapawat.

He was filmed by a closed-circuit television camera leaving a house rented by the bomb suspects shortly before a string of blasts on February 14, and is believed to have fled to Iran the same day, he said.

“Thai authorities will seek him through diplomatic channels,” Pansiri added.

Police said they were also gathering information on a potential sixth suspect.

On Friday Thai police had said they were hunting for another Iranian named as Nikkhahfard Javad. It was unclear Monday whether he was still a suspect in the case and no arrest warrant has been issued.

The kingdom has stepped up security following Tuesday’s blasts, which was the third bomb incident to shake world capitals in less than 24 hours.

Thai police have said that Israeli diplomats were the intended target of the plot, but Tehran has rejected accusations that it is behind a terror campaign against the Jewish state.

Arrest warrants have been issued for four other Iranians, two of whom have been detained and charged over the botched attack, which came to light after an apparently unintended explosion at a Bangkok house.

One of them — named as 28-year-old Saeid Moradi — had his legs blown off as he hurled a bomb at Thai police while fleeing. Another, Mohamad Khazaei, was detained trying to board a flight out of the country.

Thailand is seeking the extradition of another Iranian arrested in Malaysia in connection with the blasts, while an Iranian woman who rented the house used by the suspects in Bangkok is thought to have fled the kingdom.

In handcuffs and a bullet proof vest, Khazaei was taken by police on Monday to the scene of the first blast as part of the investigation.

Quake-weary Christchurch still on edge, one year on

Christchurch residents have been living on their nerves for more than 12 months amid constant aftershocks, afraid that next tremor could be another “big one”, repeating the disaster that ripped their lives apart a year ago.

“The hand of God comes down and gives us another smack,” said writer Jane Bowron, who has chronicled the trials endured by New Zealand’s second city in her book “Old Bucky and Me”.

“When we get another big aftershock it takes us back to ground zero. It’s groundhog day.”

The South Island city has endured some 10,000 tremors since the seismic seizures began in September 2010, the most devastating a 6.3-magnitude quake on February 22 last year that killed 185 people and levelled much of the city centre.

Further major tremors rattled the city in June and December last year.

Firefighter Jim Ryburn said that unlike most disasters, where people can pick up the pieces and rebuild their lives, the ongoing aftershocks meant there was a constant feeling of danger and a sense of uncertainty about the future.

“December hit people really hard,” he said, referring to a swarm of aftershocks that rocked the city on December 23, sending terrified Christmas shoppers fleeing from stores.

“We hadn’t had anything major for a while, people were relaxing, looking forward to some time off. People were thinking ‘yeah, I’m getting over it’ and it physically messed with people. People were tired all of a sudden.”

Residents say the mind freezes when the earth begins shuddering with jackhammer intensity, then roads become choked with traffic and telecommunications go down as people desperately try to check on loved ones.

It’s an ordeal most would count themselves unfortunate to experience once, let alone four times in 18 months.

The overwhelming feeling in the city is one of earthquake weariness, but seismologists warn aftershocks could continue for years as the ground around a previously unknown fault that shifted in September 2010 continues to settle.

Some have fled. Official estimates say Christchurch’s population of around 350,000 decreased by 10,600 in the four months after the February quake, although Bowron says the figure is outdated and many more have now left.

Others have adapted as best they can to what Christchurch calls “the new normal”, where the threat of a major earthquake is ever present.

Bowron says she no longer feels comfortable walking under verandahs and would not contemplate using a multi-storey car park after seeing the tragic consequences of the February quake.

Everyday activities in the city such as gardening or going for a swim are no longer an option — the local pool is “munted”, in the local lexicon, while liquefaction — quake-produced quicksand — has put paid to tending flower beds.

With the downtown “red zone” area still fenced off because it is too dangerous to enter, locals have struggled to come to terms with the scale of the destruction.

Aviation company Helipro runs chopper flights over central Christchurch, with some of the proceeds going to an injured earthquake victim, and says more than 90 percent of customers are residents wanting a first-hand view of their stricken city.

Feelings are mixed about the first anniversary of the February 22 earthquake.

Bowron admits a “totally unscientific” fear another quake will hit, but remembers fondly the dignified initial memorial in the city’s main park in the wake of February’s disaster that brought the community together.

Ryburn, a firefighter for 32 years who worked during the quakes and has heard some “heavy stories” since being seconded as a welfare officer post-February, was uncertain whether he would take part, torn between a desire to honour the dead and a need to move on.

Some of his colleagues have left town for the anniversary.

Bowron says Christchurch, where entire suburbs have been condemned, now resembles a frontier town and is in the process of reinventing itself.

Once regarded as “a little slice of England” in New Zealand, it is aggressively recruiting internationally the thousands of skilled workers who will be needed in the NZ$30 billion ($24.4 billion) effort to rebuild the city.

Bowron said the injection of youth from countries such as Ireland had the potential to reinvigorate Christchurch and change the nature of the city from its fusty English roots.

Philippine police wanted for S.Korean kidnap

Philippine authorities have ordered the arrest of ten policemen accused of kidnapping four South Korean tourists in a plot involving their countrymen tour guides, the Manila City government said Monday.

The capital’s mayor, Alfredo Lim, also ordered that the 10 be dropped from police rolls after they went into hiding on February 14, around the time the kidnapping incident occurred.

“The incident is a tremendous and serious flaw on the good name of the police department,” a statement issued by Mayor Lim’s office said.

The order came after a South Korean tourist guide was arrested in his home country last week for allegedly conspiring with the Filipino police officers in the abduction.

The guide, identified by Lim’s office as Choi Jang Tae, arrived in Manila with 12 South Korean tourists for a four-day vacation and enticed four of them to go shopping with him last week.

As they were walking to a popular mall, the four tourists were accosted by armed men who forced them into a van, the statement from the mayor’s office said.

The four were then told by their captors they would be charged with illegal possession of drugs unless they paid $30,000. Another South Korean tourist guide later facilitated the transfer of the money, the statement added.

This South Korean has since been arrested in the Philippines, the mayor’s office added.

Law-enforcement officials have assured that all the policemen involved in the crime will be charged and the money they extorted will be returned to its owners.

Lim, a former Manila police chief, also ordered a revamp of Manila police anti-narcotics units to prevent further incidents.

The Philippines has long struggled with corruption and abuse among the police which has sometimes led to foreign tourists being victimised.

In 2011, five Philippine policemen were sacked after they forced a German tourist to buy laptops for them by threatening to charge him with terrorism.

Proceeds were up 14.4 percent in July and by nearly 15 percent in October compared with a year earlier but then fell 12.5 percent in November.

After two years of sluggish demand, Greece is believed to have benefited this year from unrest in neighbouring North Africa which forced travellers to seek alternative destinations.

Greece is struggling to escape bankruptcy with the help of loans from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in return for a host of painful austerity measures.

After months of bitter debate, approval appeared in the offing, with IMF chief Christine Lagarde praising Greece’s “great efforts” towards economic reform and hardline German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble also declaring himself confident of a rescue deal to avert imminent default.

Joining the talks with ministers from the 17-nation euro area, Lagarde said: “Greece has evidently made great efforts and now we must continue the work.”

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos arrived at the venue for the talks at around 3:10 pm (1410 GMT).

Schaeuble said that after six months of wrangling, euro nations were nearing the point where they can finally agree on a writedown of privately-held government debt worth 100 billion euros as well as guarantees and loans eventually adding up to another 130 billion euros.

Greece sees “a long period of uncertainty coming to a close today, a period that benefited neither the Greek economy, nor the euro area overall,” Venizelos said after months that saw eurozone hardliners’ patience with Greece almost snap and suggestions Athens be cut adrift.

European Union partners see Greece as the victim of chronic financial mismanagement by dynastic political forces — what Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti last week called a “perfect catalogue” of errors.

Most analysts consider that if Greece were to default, the consequences for the Greek people would be catastrophic, even if less dangerous now for the rest of the eurozone than would have been the case last year.

In Washington, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the United States backed the idea of a new IMF loan for Athens.

The Group of 20 major economies will meet later this week in Mexico seeking to boost IMF lending resources.

If agreed, a bond swap with private investors would be launched on Wednesday, right on time for Athens as it faces debt repayments of about 14.5 billion euros on March 20.

But full delivery of the rest of the package, as well as IMF assistance, will be contingent on Greece enacting deeply unpopular spending cuts and reforms ordered by the EU and International Monetary Fund.

Debt reduction targets have veered off course with Greece now in a fifth year of recession but a senior official told AFP there was still a 5.5-billion euro hole in the figures.

Ahead of a general election in April, surveillance of day-to-day economic management is critical after the failure of an initial 110-billion-euro EU-IMF rescue package approved nearly two years ago.

After weeks of what officials said was “deliberate pressure” to get the ruling class in Athens to stick to promises of change, the new bailout has been likened to the aid equivalent of a hospital drip.

Germany and the Netherlands still need to get the second bailout past their sceptical parliaments.

A small army of EU officials is building up in Athens to make sure Greece delivers on its pledges including a 22 percent reduction in the country’s minimum wage and a 12-percent cut to pensions of more than 1,300 euros a month.

“Greece must be shadowed on its reform path so that the money arrives where it is meant to,” said Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter.

On top of 3.2 billion euros in the latest spending cuts, Greece agreed to open a blocked, or “escrow” account to ensure that aid for repayments to government creditors is set aside and not used for other purposes.

Thousands of people protested in Athens and Thessaloniki on Sunday, one week after rioters set fire to buildings in the Greek capital to protest new cuts approved by the parliament.

Finally parking the Greek problem to one side this week would allow eurozone leaders to focus on building a financial firewall for the currency as a whole at a March 1 and 2 summit.

After months of acrimonious debate, eurozone ministers and the IMF were locked in closed-door talks seeking to close a combined 230-billion-euro ($300 billion) bailout for Greece — but without increasing the volume of loans from public purses.

Under the terms of an October agreement between eurozone leaders, the writedown was to chop 100 billion euros from Greece’s 350-billion total debts.

Sweeteners for Greek banks worth 30 billion euros, plus further guarantees to underwrite a bond swap the eurozone wants to launch formally on Wednesday, are also needed to reach the remaining 130 billion.

Athens faces debt repayments of about 14.5 billion euros on March 20, otherwise it could be classed as bankrupt.

Hardliners in the eurozone insist the final deal must stick to the October arrangement.

That is a problem because an analysis of Greek debt dynamics produced by the EU and the IMF shows that with the country into a fifth year of recession, another 5.5 billion must be found to ensure Greek debt falls from around 160 percent of GDP to 120 percent of output by 2020.

On entering the talks, Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter said that the private sector could be asked to “help a bit more.”

A Greek finance ministry source had said shortly beforehand that Venizelos was holding a “parallel negotiation” with the International Insititute of Finance (IIF), including chairman and Deutsche Bank chief Josef Ackermann.

Japan logs record trade deficit in January

Japan posted a record trade deficit in January, latest data showed, as fuel imports rose following last year’s nuclear disaster while exports were hit by a strong yen and slumping demand in Europe.

The January deficit came in at 1.475 trillion yen ($18.5 billion), the highest since records began in 1979, the finance ministry said.

The record figure comes after Japan registered its first annual trade deficit in 31 years in 2011, and triggered warnings that the country was likely to see more negative figures throughout the year.

The January statistic was more than triple the year-before shortfall of 479.4 billion yen and far exceeded the previous monthly record of 967.9 billion yen in January 2009 during the global financial crisis.

It was the fourth straight monthly deficit but in line with a 1.468 trillion shortfall forecast in polls by Dow Jones Newswires and the Nikkei business daily. The Nikkei 225 index closed the day 1.08 percent higher.

Japan’s overall exports tumbled 9.3 percent to 4.510 trillion yen last month because of lower shipments of semiconductors and other electronic devices.

“We expect this trend of deficit to continue until early 2013″ with demand for fossil fuel power generation staying strong while the slow global economy and the high yen hurt exports, said Barclays Capital economist Yuichiro Nagai.

Imports surged 9.8 percent to 5.985 trillion yen, with purchases of liquefied natural gas shooting up 74.3 percent and coal rising 26.5 percent.

Demand for fossil fuels has surged in Japan after the March 11 earthquake-tsunami disaster sparked the world’s worst nuclear accident in 25 years, leading the government to take many atomic reactors offline.

Satoshi Osanai, economist at Daiwa Institute of Research, said “the trade deficit is likely to continue” for the time being, adding that Europe’s debt woes have also dealt Japan a blow.

“The US economy is underpinning (Japanese) exports, as seen in higher US-bound shipments of automobiles, but demand from Europe is weak,” he said.

Japan’s surplus with the European Union in January dived 98.9 percent to 700 million yen, with shipments falling 7.7 percent to 531.3 billion yen. Exports of automobiles dived 29.7 percent and electronic parts slumped 30.2 percent.

European demand has slumped owing to the region’s debt crisis, which threatens to plunge the global economy back into recession.

With the United States, Japan’s trade surplus fell 7.6 percent to 265.3 billion yen.

Japan logged a trade deficit of 357.1 billion yen with the rest of Asia, the first shortfall in three years. It ran a record deficit of 587.9 billion yen with its biggest trading partner China, due partly to the Lunar New Year break there.

With the Middle East, the source of most of Japan’s oil, the deficit rose 13.6 percent to hit 988 billion yen, while the shortfall with Australia, another key energy source, was 20 percent higher at 298 billion yen

Japan’s purchases of LNG from the Middle East rose more than 60 percent by quantity and nearly 120 percent by value. Crude import costs were 9.2 percent higher.

But while Nagai at Barclays expects the negative trade balances to continue, he said exports were likely to start picking up “in a few months”, catching up on growth in imports and eventually reversing the overall deficit.

“We believe the US economy will gain steam first, which will then help shore up Asia’s slowing economy,” he said. “A recovery in the European economy is likely to come last, probably in late 2012 or early 2013.”

Credit Suisse said January’s huge deficit suggested Japan will also incur a record deficit on the current account, which measures not only merchandise trade but services and investment returns.

“We expect the trade balance to remain in deficit by approximately 500 billion yen per month (seasonally adjusted) in the first half of 2012,” economists at Credit Suisse said in a report.

Standard & Poor’s on Monday reaffirmed Japan’s AA- sovereign debt rating, citing the nation’s vast overseas assets and relatively solid financial system.

However, it kept its outlook at negative saying a plan to raise sales tax may boost revenues but “would not solve the country’s structural problems, which include shrinking nominal (gross domestic product) and increasing costs of social security”.