AP-Undertone of Conflict in Asia

Saturday, January 1 6:20 AM SGT

Undertone of Conflict in Asia

By THOMAS WAGNER Associated Press Writer

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.

After a century marred by colonial rule, civil war and genocide, the celebrants at the 12th-century monument marked the passing of Cambodia's first year of total peace since the late 1960s.

In Myanmar, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi issued a gloomy holiday statement about the plight of democracy in her country, also known as Burma, where the military has ruled for 37 years.

The opposition leader, whose movements are heavily restricted by the regime, said the military has crushed Myanmar's people.

``I think for me ... the great hope for the millennium (is) that we must be free from want and fear, not just the people of Burma but people all over the world,'' she said in a videotaped message smuggled out of Myanmar and obtained by Associated Press Television News in Bangkok, Thailand.

In Singapore, 8,000 members of nine religions started a marathon millennium prayer session for peace and tolerance. It included Buddhist monks in saffron robes, Singaporean Catholic nuns in white habits, Sikhs, Muslims, Zoroastrians and Taoist priests.