Abe seeks strong Japanese defense

Abe seeks strong Japanese defense

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters) — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Tuesday that he would push during his term to revise Japan’s war-renouncing constitution as part of his plan to improve the country’s defense capabilities.

Saying he hoped it would foster a “new spirit” in Japan, Abe said, in an interview with The Washington Post, that he would seek a new constitution within six years.

In the interview posted on the newspaper’s Web site, Abe also suggested that his administration could take the interim step of reinterpreting the existing constitution to more rapidly achieve his goal.

The Japanese constitution drafted by U.S. occupation forces after World War Two bans the country from maintaining a military, although it has been interpreted as allowing armed forces purely for defense purposes.

Abe also vowed to fortify the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance during his first official meeting with President George W. Bush at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Hanoi this weekend, the Post said.

Despite the strong Japan-U.S. alliance, Abe noted that it is not clear whether Tokyo is permitted under its constitution to shoot down a ballistic missile flying over Japanese territory en route to the United States, the Post said.

Japan had to pass special laws to allow its armed forces to be sent to the Indian Ocean off Afghanistan and to Iraq in support of U.S. operations.

Even then, its forces were allowed to operate only in noncombat zones and to take part only in activities such as reconstruction and logistical support.

Leading Japanese scholars have said that rather than revising the constitution, policy changes could be made through official clarifications issued by the cabinet, the Post said.

Abe called for analysis of new security protocols on a case-by-case basis, the newspaper said.

“We need to take up each individual example and study whether they ‘actually’ infringe upon the constitution,” said Abe.

Abe also vowed that Japan would adhere to its non-nuclear principles, but added that he could not stop private citizens from expressing their views.

“For the general public to discuss this matter — for example, academics, scholars or journalists — is the freedom of the Japanese people,” said Abe. “I am not in a position of restricting that.”

Controversy erupted last month when a key member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said Japan should discuss whether it should acquire nuclear weapons after North Korea conducted a nuclear test.

Resuming discussions with China.
The Associated Press also reported that Japan and China are resuming discussion between their defense chiefs after a three-year hiatus, according to Japanese officials.

The two sides are arranging talks in Japan between Zhang Qinsheng, a senior officer in the People’s Liberation Army, and Defense Agency Vice Minister Takemasa Moriya, a Defense Agency spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

The Nihon Keizai business daily said the meetings are likely scheduled for November 28 or November 29.

This is a reproduction of CNN’s article. This is in case CNN’s link no longer works.

Australia to ban N Korean ships (Japan did week ago)

Australia to ban N Korean ships (Japan did week ago)

Australia is to ban North Korean ships from entering its ports in response to its claimed nuclear bomb test, the foreign minister has announced.

Alexander Downer told Parliament the move would help Australia make a “quite clear contribution” to other sanctions agreed by the UN on Saturday.

The move came as US envoy Christopher Hill arrived in Tokyo for talks on how to enforce the sanctions.

The UN resolution imposes both weapons and financial sanctions on the North.

But despite the unanimous vote, disagreements have emerged between the members of the council.

Beijing has indicated that it still has reservations about carrying out the extensive cargo inspections that Washington says are called for in the resolution.

Ship inspections.
Australia is one of the few countries to have diplomatic relations with North Korea, but its trade ties are limited. In 2005, imports amounted to A$16m ($12m).

“If we are to ban North Korean vessels from visiting Australian ports then I think that will help Australia make a quite clear contribution to the United Nations sanctions regime.”

Christopher Hill is expected to spend two days in Japan before heading on to South Korea. Talks will focus on US-Japan co-operation over the North Korean crisis.

Japan, which banned North Korean ships from its ports last week, is looking at whether it can provide logistical support for US vessels if they start trying to inspect cargo ships going to or from North Korea.

The restrictions imposed by Japan’s pacifist constitution may require the government to pass new laws to allow that to happen.

In a further diplomatic drive, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to arrive in Japan on Wednesday.

She reportedly intends to reassure the country that Washington will provide adequate protection in the event that North Korea obtains a viable nuclear weapon – a message she will later take to South Korea.

‘Heavy responsibility’.

The UN resolution against North Korea was agreed after lengthy negotiations.

It imposes tough weapons restrictions, targets luxury goods and imposes a travel ban on some North Korean officials.

It also allows the inspection of cargo vessels going in and out of North Korea for banned materials, although the resolution was weakened slightly at China and Russia’s insistence, to make this provision less mandatory.

Beijing’s UN envoy, Wang Guangya, said immediately after the vote that China urged countries to “refrain from taking any provocative steps that may intensify the tension”.

Both Russia and China are concerned that inspections could spark naval confrontations with North Korean boats.

But the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, told American television that China had voted for the sanctions and therefore “China itself now has an obligation to make sure that it complies.”

North Korea reacted angrily to the resolution. Its UN envoy, Pak Gil-yon, condemned the move before storming out of the meeting in New York.

The isolated communist state announced on 9 October that it had carried out an underground nuclear test near Gilju in Hamgyong province.

US officials said on Saturday that preliminary results of scientific tests appeared to confirm that that claim was true, but they stressed that more tests were needed to reach a conclusion.

This was reproduced from the BBC in case their link is no longer working.

Africa

I have been spending a little time over at Causes of Interest. I posted an article about Chad, Darfur and Uganda. Please go check it out. Thanks, and have a good day.

Africa’s forgotten conflicts

Africa’s forgotten conflicts.

By Simon Hooper for CNN.

(CNN) — United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland was in Uganda on Sunday to meet Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group responsible for an insurgency that has cost tens of thousands of lives and displaced nearly two million people.

While conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan dominate headlines, it is Africa — more commonly associated with famine and disease — that has suffered most from war in recent years.

More than five million Africans are estimated to have died as a result of conflicts in the past decade, while the continent accounts for 80 percent of the total number of U.N. peacekeepers deployed around the world.

Uganda

Egeland has described the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda between government forces and the Lord’s Resistance Army as the most neglected humanitarian crisis in the world. Rebel leader Kony says he wants to rule Uganda according to the Ten Commandments but the LRA campaign has been marked by brutality, including the abduction of many school children with girls forced to be sex slaves and boys pressed into the guerrilla army.

A truce was signed in August but hopes of a lasting peace are complicated by the fact that LRA leaders, including Kony, are wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Since 1998 the country formerly known as Zaire has been caught up in a conflict variously described as the world’s deadliest since World War Two and the “African World War,” with up to four million people losing their lives.

The origins of the war date back to 1997 when Mobutu Sese Seko, Zairian president since 1965, was overthrown by Rwandan-backed rebels led by Laurent-Desire Kabila. Kabila and his former allies quickly fell out, plunging the country into a civil war fueled by rebel forces supported by Rwanda and Uganda. Kabila’s regime was defended by troops from Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Chad and Sudan, while locally-raised forces controlled by warlords further complicated the conflict, with regional factions battling for control of diamond mines and mineral resources.

Kabila was assassinated in 2001 and replaced by his son, Joseph Kabila. A fragile cease-fire has been in place since 2003, although localized outbreaks of fighting continue. Elections held this year — the first in 40 years — marred by violence but hailed as a success. The country has the largest deployment of U.N. peacekeepers anywhere in the world — some 18,500 personnel.

Sudan

The east African country has been in a state of near permanent civil war since winning independence from Britain in 1956. Since 2003 a rebellion has raged in the western Darfur region, fueled by the grievances of the local black African population who claim they are being oppressed by the Arab-led government in Khartoum.

In response Arab militia known as the Janjaweed began attacking villages, killing and raping and forcing millions into refugee camps. The government denies controlling the militiamen, but former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell described the conflict as “genocide” in 2004 and Human Rights Watch accuses Khartoum of killing civilians indiscriminately.

A peace deal signed in May between Khartoum and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) has done little to stop the crisis, fragmenting the rebels into those who accept the cease-fire agreement and those who don’t. More than 200,000 have died to date while around two million refugees live in over-flowing camps lacking food, water and medicine. The conflict has also spilled over the border into neighboring Chad, where many refugees have fled.

Somalia

Somalia has lacked a functioning central government since warlords ousted former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and a two-year U.N. peacekeeping effort was abandoned in 1995 after enduring heavy casualties.

In May 2006 Islamic militants loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and soldiers fighting for an alliance of secular warlords known as the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) fought fierce gun battles in the capital Mogadishu, killing several hundred people in the crossfire.

With the UIC increasing its control in the south of the country, Arab League-mediated peace talks between the group and Somalia’s transitional government collapsed at the start of this month, prompting fears of a return to all-out civil war.

Militia accused of Sudan killings

Militia accused of Sudan killings

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Pro-government militiamen launched new attacks in Sudan’s volatile Darfur region that may have killed at least a dozen people, international observers said Sunday.

A coalition of Darfur rebel groups known as the National Redemption Front said some 300 janjaweed militiamen on camels and horseback raided the West Darfur town of Sirba on Saturday, backed by 18 military vehicles.

“The attack resulted in 32 dead, 18 injured including women and children,” the NRF said in a statement. The rebels said janjaweed militias and elements from the regular Sudanese army burned about 100 houses and looted hundreds of heads of cattle.

A U.N. official in Darfur said the janjaweed had looted several villages and a refugee camp in the past few days, reportedly killing about 12 people. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

African Union peacekeepers in Darfur said they were investigating the reports of fresh janjaweed raids near Sirba.

“Our investigators are heading there to confirm the reports,” Hassan Gibril, the deputy head of the AU mission, told The Associated Press by telephone from Darfur.

The casualty figures from the rebels could not be independently verified, and Sudanese government officials were not immediately available to comment on the accusations.

The government in Khartoum has denied backing the janjaweed, blamed for the worst atrocities in more than three years of conflict in Darfur. But U.N. investigators say the government has armed the militia, and members of the paramilitary group have acknowledged receiving state support.

The U.N. blamed janjaweed militiamen for killing 50 people, including 27 children, in the Jebel Moon area of West Darfur in late October. A Sudanese government investigation blamed “renegade Arab tribesmen” for the killing.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have been displaced since the Darfur conflict began in February 2003, when ethnic African tribesmen took up arms against the Arab-led government in Khartoum.

A peace agreement signed by the government and one rebel group in May has been ignored, and the violence has since escalated.

Sudanese and AU officials were expected to start a series of meetings in Ethiopia’s capital on Monday to discuss the future of the 7,000-member AU peacekeeping force in the region.

A Security Council resolution has called for the U.N. to take control of the peacekeeping mission in Darfur when the AU mandate expires on December 31. But Sudan’s government has staunchly opposed a U.N. takeover, insisting that it provide money and logistics to fortify the AU troops instead.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, on a visit to Sudan’s capital, said Sunday that his country would boost its funding to the AU force, which has been hobbled by equipment and cash shortfalls. He also said France would support an Egyptian proposal to break a diplomacy deadlock by sending extra troops from Arab and other Muslim countries to bolster the AU peacekeepers in Darfur.

Reproduced because CNN does not stay in one place. If I do not do this, my readers will not be able to read the entire article. CNN, however, will get full credit.

Arab Gunmen Kill Hundreds of Villagers in Chad

Arab Gunmen Kill Hundreds of Villagers in Chad

By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: November 15, 2006

DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 14 — Hundreds of Chadians have been killed by roving groups of Arab gunmen in dozens of villages over the past 10 days, according to aid workers and human rights officials along Chad’s troubled border with Sudan.

At least 220 people have been killed, and dozens of wounded people have overwhelmed small, poorly equipped local hospitals, the United Nations said Tuesday. Chad’s government has declared a state of emergency over the attacks and has accused Sudan, its neighbor to the east, of fomenting a crisis in Chad.

“By exporting its Darfur conflict to Chad, Sudan wants to weaken Chad by making different Chadian communities fight each other,” Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, a government spokesman, told The Associated Press on Monday. “All this is to prepare the ground for a large-scale war.”

For more than two years, Chad and Sudan have traded accusations about support for insurgents across their shared border. Sudan is fighting non-Arab rebel groups in the western region of Darfur that seek greater autonomy, while Chad is fighting rebels seeking to overthrow the government of President Idriss Déby.

The conflict in Darfur, which pits the non-Arab tribes against the Arab-dominated government, has been marked by brutal intertribal violence in which the Sudanese government has armed Arab militias to fight the non-Arab insurgents. At least 200,000 people have died, and more than two million have been driven from their homes. That ethnic warfare has spilled over into Chad, inspiring copycat violence among Chadian Arabs and cross-border raids on villages by Sudanese militias.

The recent violence has been particularly brutal. One man’s eyes were gouged out with bayonets, said David Buchbinder, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who is traveling in the region affected by the attacks. Two women were burned alive in their hut, he said.

“It is extremely horrific violence,” Mr. Buchbinder said. “It is as if it is driven by hatred. It is a coordinated action over a large part of eastern Chad, and not always with theft as a motive. Sometimes the motive is only to kill.”

The attacks represent a sharp escalation of the violence in the volatile region around Darfur and threaten to further destabilize one of the most dangerous and lawless corners of the world.

The attacks appear to be the work of Arab militias from both sides of the Chad-Sudan border, and because they are occurring deep inside Chad, about 60 miles from the border, the violence is particularly ominous.

While the initial clashes between non-Arab villagers and Arab raiders appeared to involve mainly local tribes, the fresh set of attacks appears to be linked directly to the fighting in Darfur and involves a mix of Chadian and Sudanese Arabs. But even that distinction is largely academic — the porous border has little meaning for most villagers, who move back and forth freely.

The United Nations Security Council has approved a United Nations peacekeeping force to stanch the violence spreading out of Darfur and replace the largely ineffective and undermanned African Union force currently working there. But Sudan has adamantly refused to allow the new force to deploy. The United Nations plans to convene a high-level meeting on Thursday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the headquarters of the African Union, to discuss ways to end the violence.

This article has been reproduced so as not to be forgotten.