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[BurmaWatch@xxxxxxx]

Undertone of Conflict in Asia

By THOMAS WAGNER
 .c The Associated Press

  
TOKYO (AP) - Behind the fireworks, the music, the traditional dances, an 
undertone of conflict marked the New Year's celebrations in much of Asia. 

On the Indian subcontinent, in Korea, across the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere, 
troubles inherited from the dying century promised to keep tensions high in 
the new. 

In India, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who fled Chinese rule 
in his homeland in 1959, joined thousands of Hindu holy men and Buddhist 
monks singing hymns on the banks of the venerated Ganges River. 

``In the next millennium, let us pray that we can pursue all deeds that are 
pure, and do away with all those that involve sin,'' said the Dalai Lama, 
symbol of Tibet's non-violent resistance to Chinese domination. 

Much of India's attention, meanwhile, focused on the hostage drama that 
finally ended in nearby Afghanistan, an eight-day standoff linked to unrest 
in Kashmir, where Muslim militants are fighting to end Indian rule. 

Several hours before the new millennium began, the hostage impasse was 
resolved. Five armed hijackers walked off an Indian Airlines plane and were 
allowed to flee the Kandahar airport with two militants and an Islamic cleric 
released from Indian jails in exchange for the 155 plane hostages. 

South Korea celebrated the New Year with the ringing of a large bell 
symbolizing hopes for peace on the divided Korean Peninsula, where the North 
and the South are still technically at war. 

Some 10,000 South Koreans gathered in the border village of Imjingak for the 
tolling of the Peace Bell, to make their collective ``new millennium wish'' 
for an end to the armed confrontation in Korea. 

In Indonesia, they rang a giant brass gong, a gesture of hope for a more 
harmonious century in the huge, diverse archipelago, where recent fighting 
between Muslims and Christians on the island of Ambon killed 250 people. 

East Timor, which recently gained independence from Indonesia after decades 
of armed struggle, celebrated the New Year by reminding the world that it is 
the new millennium's youngest nation. 

And in China, another sign emerged of the longtime tension between the 
world's largest country and Taiwan. 

China's envoy to Taiwan, Wang Daohan, sent a New Year's greeting reiterating 
his willingness to visit the island, but only if Taiwan drops its insistence 
on being treated as a sovereign state, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency 
reported. 

Beijing considers Taiwan, ruled separately since 1949, a renegade province 
and has declared its recovery a sacred national goal. 

In Cambodia, the main celebration at the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat featured 
fireworks, traditional ballet performances and blessings from 2,000 Buddhist 
monks. It took place not far from a mass grave of the Khmer Rouge's ``killing 
fields'' regime of the late 1970s.