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Sunday March 23, 11:00 AM
Asia's top security group
seeks to tighten net on terror
KARAMBUNAI,
Malaysia, March 23 (AFP) - Asia's
top security group is seeking to tighten the net on terrorists through stricter
immigration controls and joint policing to counter heightened risks following
the US-led attack on Iraq.
Anti-terrorism experts from the ASEAN
Regional Forum (ARF) ended a two-day meeting here Saturday to improve detection
of forged passports, seal loopholes in immigration procedures and put more teeth
into law enforcement.
A report of the meeting obtained by AFP said
the absence of uniformity in the standards of travel documents, inadequate
security features and weak procedures and practices made it easy for terrorists
to move across borders.
It stressed the need for deeper
inter-agency coordination such as between police and military, enhanced sharing
of immigration data and capacity building measures to curb terrorists'
movement.
Some countries called for a convergence of visa policies
to intercept suspicious travellers and improve entry controls.
The
experts discussed the possibility of a regional smart card with biometrics
identifiers such as iris or face recognition, as well as a system linking all
ports of entry with online data to boost border security without restricting the
flow of travellers.
But the report said a lack of resources and
high cost of modern technology were major impediments for less developed
countries.
Experts warned that the region, grappling with porous
borders and inadequate resources, remained a vulnerable target for terrorists
and must not slacken in its efforts to combat the
scourge.
"Terrorists are dedicated and innovative. As our systems
get better, they get better too. It's a constant battle but it is important to
maintain focus and maintain momentum," Canada's deputy director of terrorism
Peter Bates told AFP.
The region is already feeling the
jitters.
Australia warned Saturday it has credible information that
anti-Western groups may be planning an attack in Indonesia's second largest city
of Surabaya within the next few days.
The Philippines Friday said
it would deport 11 Iraqis held on suspicion of being behind an alleged plot to
attack US installations.
Terror groups exist in the region on the
periphery of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, mainly the Jemaah Islamiyah
(JI) based in Indonesia, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf in
the Philippines and the Malaysian Militant Group.
The United States
said 68 countries have arrested more than 1,600 suspected al-Qaeda members and
supporters since the September 11 attacks.
A Malaysian report
outlining the operations of JI, blamed for the Bali bombing in Indonesia last
October which killed 202 people, said there were 418 JI members scattered in
small cells of eight to 10 members.
Malaysia has detained 65 JI
members and 25 suspected militants.
A statement by Malaysia and the
United States, which co-chaired the ARF talks, said the anti-terror war required
"unprecedented international cooperation."
Delegates said forged
passports and documents posed a big headache.
Malaysia last year
detected nine syndicates engaged in such fraud and detained 317
people.
In South Korea, cases of fake documents jumped sharply to
6,000 in 2000, from 1,055 in 1996, said the justice ministry's deputy director
of entry control, Ahn Kyusuk.
Forged passports from Thailand led
the pack, followed by those from South Korea, China, Bangladesh, Philippines and
Mongolia, he said in a report.
He said the government launched a
new document verification system in May last year, bringing such cases down to
4,696 for the year, and planned to introduce new Korean passports in 2004
incorporating biometrics features.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam.
ARF consists of the 10 ASEAN states along with Australia,
Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, South
Korea, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Russia and the United States.
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Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-03-23
The Yangon visit
Editorial: The
just-concluded official visit of Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia to Myanmar has
opened new opportunities to further expand areas of cooperation between the two
countries. The signing of three MoUs on building a Friendship Road; on Account
Trade and establishment of Joint Trade Commission and last, but not least,
Coastal and Maritime Shipping, if translated into reality, should achieve a
milestone in increasing bilateral trade.
In the past thirty years
or so, some agreements have been signed between Bangladesh and Myanmar with a
view to strengthening relations between the two neighbours but in terms of trade
and commerce it has not been possible to make much headway. Hence the renewed
initiative by the present government will hopefully give a fillip to bilateral
trade. Movement of people, particularly businessmen, is essential for
establishing person to person contacts and should be encouraged by the two
governments. The MoU on building direct road communication between Bangladesh
and Myanmar should be acted upon without delay so that exchange of visits of
business people is accelerated.
The visit took place under the
shadow of the ongoing US-UK assault on Iraq on which world attention is
focussed. But it did not distract the two neighbours from the agenda of
exploring new opportunities for fostering relations. For the two leaders it was
business as usual. The Myanmar side rolled out the red carpet for the Bangladesh
Prime Minister and went through the programme in right earnest to make the visit
a success.
Myanmar and Bangladesh share common border. Besides
India which surrounds Bangladesh on three sides, Myanmar is the only other
neighbour. Which explains why Bangladesh is so very keen to develop meaningful
relations with that country. It is good diplomacy to attach priority to building
relations with a close neighbour, namely Myanmar and that is what Bangladesh is
doing.
The groundwork has been made to fully exploit the potential
areas of mutual cooperation. It should be remembered that signing of agreements
or MoUs marks only the first step towards strengthening of relations between two
countries. What is now needed is follow-up action so that the desire of the two
sides to take forward the existing level of cooperation can be
fulfilled.
- The Independent: March 23 -
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Bangkok Post - Sunday 23 March
2003
Govt to help villagers turn cattle imports
into cash cows
Supamart Kasem
The
Agriculture Ministry is hoping to generate billions of baht in revenue for
villagers along the Burmese border by helping them to maximise profits from
imported cattle.
Under the scheme, cattle imported from Burma would
be raised at local farms under the guidance of livestock officials and
veterinarians, Deputy Minister Newin Chidchob said yesterday.
Tak
livestock chief Jirasak Pipatpongsopon said local cooperatives would be
established to process meat from the cattle into dried, smoked and canned beef
products.
Mr Newin said the Agriculture Ministry would help local
farmers secure loans from the government's 1 million baht village funds, as well
as provide other forms of financial assistance.
The scheme would
initially be launched in Mae Hong Son and Tak provinces, but permission would
also be sought to extend the scheme to the Burmese side of the border, he
said.
The project was aimed at increasing profits from around
200,000 head of cattle imported from Burma every year, which were currently sold
for about 4,000 baht per head.
Mr Newin said the scheme would
eventually generate billions of baht in revenue for villagers living on both
sides of the border, while slowing the flow of illegal workers from Burma.
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The Nation
The Lady?s not for Burning
Published on Mar 23, 2003
Christopher G
Moore's latest novel shows flashes of narrative muscle. But they're offset by
clunky metaphors and tired expat bar humour, and the treatment of Aung San Suu
Kyi as a secondary plot device smacks of cynical marketing.
This
Burmese road novel, Chris Moore's sixteenth work of fiction, follows the
adventures of Sloan Walcott, a Bangkok-based photographer and art collector
who's still married to the Japanese woman he met in the early Seventies. Now
it's the spring of 2002. Walcott is turning 53 but behaves like a selfish
teenager - happy to live from one deal to the next, as long as the Tiger beer's
flowing and the bar girls are showing.
He and his much younger,
handsome writer pal Hart have shared a brief moment of minor fame with their
1996 collaboration on "The Art of Chin Ways", a coffee table book about an
indigenous community straddling the Burmese-Indian border. But now, thanks to a
lucky discovery on Sloan's previous solo trip to Burma, the two are on their way
back.
Walcott, before leaving Rangoon airport, literally stumbled
upon a camera that had been stashed between two check-in counters. After
stuffing away the camera and developing the film back in Bangkok, he finds 18
shots of Aung San Suu Kyi taken after an attempt on her life in 1996, plus a
single, sexy pose by a Burmese girl bearing a blue scorpion
tattoo.
The photos were taken by Kazuo Takeda, a Japanese newspaper
reporter who later died in a mysterious roadside accident in Japan. The old
man's father exacts a promise from Walcott to give the 18 shots to Aung San Suu
Kyi and warns him to get rid of the one of the girl with the tattoo. Walcott
finds an opportunity to keep the promise: the famous NLD leader is about to be
released from house arrest. Using a side trip to Moulmein to search for ancient
Mon relics as an excuse to deliver the photos, Walcott invites his old pal Hart
on a trip whose real purpose is to learn the story behind the girl with the
tattoo. Along the way, they meet Sarah, an exotic anthropology student from
Vancouver who serves as a kind of globalised version of the Patricia Arquette
heroine from John Boorman's "Beyond Rangoon". Hart wins the battle for her
affections, but all three share a bond.
The strengths of "Waiting
for the Lady" lie in its weaving of the personal drama of Kazuo's photographs
with the history of Japanese presence in Burma during World War II. Moore's
passages on the "comfort girl" trade are well-drawn, and the barren, dusty roads
of the Burmese countryside are a fitting backdrop to the sadness that unfolds
through characters such as Khin Aung, an 84-year-old doctor who describes his
autopsies on the bodies of Aung San, the students murdered in 1962, and his own
son.
What diminishes the book are the clunky metaphors and tiresome
sex imagery ("The total resolve of the Burmese army reminded me of my wife",
"Blue Island, a rim of land against the horizon as neatly manicured as a Patpong
whore's eyebrows") that too often trivialise Moore's subject.
As
for "The Lady" herself? Aung San Suu Kyi's character is discarded by the
half-way point - used up and cast off like some cheap, cardboard cutout whore
from one of Moore's earlier novels. By the time we get to the press conference
following her release from house arrest, just before Sloan gives her Kazuo's
photographs, what is the question Sloan is dying to ask the once-shining hope of
Burmese democracy?
"What colour are your panties?"
No
doubt, the folks at SPDC headquarters in Rangoon will be rolling in the aisles
over that one. But could such a vulgar insult be interpreted as a deliberate
critique of the NLD leader's ineffectiveness in boycott-crippled Burma? Not
likely.
But then, much of Moore's comedic appeal is based on
satirical caricature. One of his favourite targets here is the pseudo-writer.
Jokes about newspaper proofreaders are an oddly recurring theme throughout the
book and, like an extended David Letterman joke, become irritating. The hint of
bitterness is also ironic: "Waiting for the Lady" includes more than a dozen
glaring typos - not including on the dust jacket, which spells the protagonist's
name as both "Walcott" and "Wolcott".
While Moore occasionally
captures the Orwellian nightmare that is Burma (particularly in his passages on
Ne Win and the chillingly-named Drug Elimination Museum), it would be stretching
things to say, as the promotional blurb for this book does, that what George
Orwell and Graham Greene "did for their times, Christopher G Moore does for
ours."
Serious writers don't make such comparisons. Rather, they
wait for reliable sources (the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of
Books) to do it for them.
Moore writes a decent potboiler. But
Greene? Orwell? I'm afraid he's a few Tiger beer empties wide of that mark.
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