Myanmar grants access to one U.S. aid shipment

By FOSTER KLUG, Associated Press Writer

The governing military junta in Myanmar has agreed to allow a single U.S. cargo aircraft to bring in relief supplies for victims of a devastating cyclone, the Bush administration said Friday.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the United States welcomed the go-ahead to land a U.S. military C-130 in the country on Monday. He said he hopes this is the beginning of continued aid flowing into Myanmar from the United States, other nations and international relief agencies.

Earlier Friday, Ky Luu, director of the U.S. office of foreign disaster assistance, had said that skilled aid workers were being forced to sit on the sidelines as victims of last week's cyclone were dying. His comments reflect mounting frustration among the United States and other countries as they wait for permission from the military-led government to begin trying to help.

Said Johndroe: "We will continue to work with the government of Burma to allow other assistance. We hope that this is the beginning of a long line of assistance from the United States to Burma." Myanmar is also known as Burma.

Johndroe also said that while the U.S. still has limited leeway to help, "One flight is much better than no flights."

"They're going to need our help for a long time," Johndroe said. He spoke in Crawford, Texas, where President Bush's daughter, Jenna, will be wed on Saturday.

The breakthrough came after days of waiting on the U.S. side. It is not yet known what supplies will be included. U.S. aircraft have been positioned in Thailand and elsewhere nearby waiting for permission to transport supplies to the cyclone-devastated country.

The U.S. military has C-130 cargo aircraft and about a dozen helicopters in the region, ready to fly supplies into Myanmar. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Friday that the aircraft could reach Myanmar in a few hours.

In addition, U.S. Navy ships have begun moving from the Gulf of Thailand toward Myanmar to be available if needed.

Johndroe said he could not speak to one specific cause for the breakthrough, but added: "Clearly the junta has determined that the magnitude of this disaster requires additional assistance."

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta came to power after snuffing out a 1988 pro-democracy movement against the previous military dictatorship, killing at least 3,000 people in the process. The junta also violently crushed protests last year.

Luu had urged the generals to allow access to foreign aid teams, including a group of U.S. specialists waiting in Thailand; he said desperately needed supplies are piling up on airport tarmacs.

"This is a very vulnerable population, and a shock of this magnitude is going to take people right off the cliff," Luu told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign affairs think tank in Washington.

He said the message to the junta is clear: If it allows U.S. officials in, "we will be able to make a difference."

"People are dying, and it's approaching a week," he said.

Myanmar's ruling military junta earlier seized two planeloads of critical aid sent by the U.N. The U.N. food program suspended help after the action, but later said it is sending two planes to Myanmar to help hungry and homeless survivors.

Officials have said that up to 1.9 million people are homeless, injured or threatened by disease and hunger, and only one out of 10 have received some kind of aid in the six days since the cyclone hit.

Tony Banbury, Asia director for the U.N. World Food Program, said by satellite from Thailand that the "big issue" is: What are the Myanmar authorities going to do? The WFP, he said, will keep working, but "I don't think we have much leverage with the authorities."

"Our hands are getting more and more tied," he said. "The situation is obviously desperate."

Sein Win, an exiled leader of Myanmar's opposition, said in an interview that the United States and other nations must more strongly pressure China, which is seen as having significant economic and political influence with Myanmar's generals.

"The world is not telling China to do what they should do ... to save people," Win said. He added that China has leverage over Myanmar, and said "the question is whether they are going to use it or not."

Myanmar seizes UN aid supplies, Junta 'not ready' to let in US

Associated Press

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's military leaders seized aid shipments headed for cyclone survivors and told the top U.S. diplomat there Friday that they're not ready to let in American aid workers despite warnings the country is on the verge of a medical catastrophe.

Another 4 inches of rain was forecast to fall next week as more than 1 million people waited for food, clean water, shelter and medicine to reach them. Diplomats and aid groups warned the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because of illnesses and said thousands of children may have been orphaned.

The U.N. World Food Program said two planeloads of supplies containing enough high-energy biscuits to feed 95,000 people were seized Friday, prompting the world body to say it was suspending aid flights.

Later, WFP chief spokeswoman Nancy Roman said the flights would resume on Saturday while negotiations continued for the release of the supplies.

Myanmar's government acknowledged taking control of the shipments and said it plans to distribute the aid itself to the affected areas.

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, government spokesman Ye Htut said the junta had clearly stated what it would do and denied the action amounted to a seizure.

"I would like to know which person or organization (made these) these baseless accusations," he said.

The WFP's regional director, Tony Banbury, directly appealed to Myanmar's military leaders in an interview with Associated Press Television News.

"Please, this food is going to people who need it very much. You and I, we have the same interests," Banbury said. "Those victims — those 1 million or more people — who need this assistance are not part of a political dialogue. They need this humanitarian assistance. Please release it."

Shari Villarosa, the U.S. charge d'affairs in Yangon, said she met with Myanmar Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu on Friday to discuss American relief operations.

Myanmar says it will accept aid from all countries, but prohibits the entry of foreign workers who would deliver and manage the operations. The junta is not ready to change that position, Villarosa said she was told.

But Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, has agreed to allow a single U.S. cargo aircraft to bring in relief supplies for victims of a cyclone, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Stuart Upton said Friday.

"We hope that this is the beginning of broader support between the United States and Burma to help the Burmese people," he said.

The U.S. has an enormous ability to deliver aid quickly, evident during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations.

More than 60,000 people are dead or missing and entire villages are submerged in the Irrawaddy delta after Saturday's cyclone. Many of the survivors waiting for food, clean water and medicine were crammed into Buddhist monasteries or camped outdoors.

The U.N. estimates 1.5 million people have been severely affected and has voiced concern about the disposal of dead bodies.

"Many are not buried and lie in the water. They have started rotting and the stench is beyond words," Anders Ladekarl, head of the Danish Red Cross.

About 20,000 body bags were being sent so volunteers from the Myanmar chapter of the Red Cross can start collecting bodies, he said.

The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization said its models forecast three days of strong rain next week that could dump 4 inches in Myanmar beginning Thursday or Friday.

Heavy rain could worsen the situation in the storm-affected coastal region, the meteorological agency said, though it cautioned that forecasts beyond five days could change.

In the village of Kongyangon, someone had written in Burmese, "We are all in trouble. Please come help us" on black asphalt, a video from the Norway-based opposition news network, the Democratic Voice of Burma, showed. A few feet away was another plea: "We're hungry."

In Yangon, the price of increasingly scarce water has shot up by more than 500 percent, and rice and oil jumped by 60 percent over the last three days, the Danish Red Cross said.

The U.N. has grown increasingly critical of Myanmar's refusal to let in foreign aid workers who could assess the extent of the disaster with the junta apparently overwhelmed. None of the 10 visa applications submitted by the WFP has been approved.

"The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts," Risley said. "It's astonishing."

The junta said in a statement Friday it was grateful to the international community for its assistance — which has included 11 chartered planes loaded with aid supplies — but the best way to help was just to send in material rather than personnel.

Andrew Brookes, an aerospace specialist at the IISS, an independent think tank, said Myanmar has about 15 transport planes but most are small jets not adequate to carry hundreds of tons of supplies. The country has fewer than 40 helicopters and only a fraction may be operational, he said.

"Even if they were all serviceable it's not even a drop in the ocean. The task is so awesome it would phase even a sophisticated force like the British, French or Germans," Brookes said.

It is not clear how much aid has been delivered to the victims in the Irrawaddy delta.

"Believe me, the government will not allow outsiders to go into the devastated area," said Yangon food shop owner Joseph Kyaw.

"The government only cares about its own stability. They don't care about the plight of the people," he said.

Three Red Cross aid flights loaded with shelter kits and other emergency supplies landed in Myanmar Friday without incident.

"We are not experiencing any problems getting in (unlike) the United Nations," Danish Red Cross spokesman Hans Beck Gregersen said.

One relief flight was sent back after landing in Yangon on Thursday because it carried a search-and-rescue team and media representatives who had not received permission to enter the country, the junta said. It did not give details, but said the plane had flown in from Qatar.

According to state media, 23,335 people died and 37,019 are missing from Cyclone Nargis.

Grim assessments were made about what lies ahead. The aid group Action Against Hunger noted that the delta region is known as the country's granary, and the cyclone hit before the harvest.

"If the harvest has been destroyed this will have a devastating impact on food security in Myanmar," the group said.

Kenya violence grows after opposition leader slain

By TOM MALITI, Associated Press Writer

Gunmen killed an opposition lawmaker in Nairobi and government helicopters fired on crowds in the Rift Valley on Tuesday, the latest flare-up of the ethnic fighting that has gripped Kenya since its disputed presidential election.

Under increasing pressure to share power, President Mwai Kibaki and the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, formally opened negotiations but the two remained far apart on the vote outcome — an issue each indicates is not negotiable.

Odinga insisted what needed "the most urgent attention" was the resolution of the flawed election results. Kibaki deplored the fact that some Kenyans "have been incited to hate one another and view each other as enemies."

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is helping mediate the dispute and Tuesday's meeting.

"The people need you," he told them. "They want you to take charge of the situation and do whatever possible to prevent the downward slide into chaos that is threatening this country."

Mugabe Were, who was shot to death as he drove home, was among a slew of opposition members who won seats in the legislative vote held at the same time as the presidential election. The opposition, which won the most seats in parliament, accuses Kibaki of stealing the presidential vote.

After Were's death, groups of armed youths began gathering in two Nairobi slums. Sabat Abdullah, a slum resident, said a gang hefting machetes dragged a doctor from the president's Kikuyu tribe from his clinic "and then cut and cut until his head was off."

Similar scenes have convulsed western Kenya, where police in helicopters fired on crowds on Tuesday. Since the Dec. 27 election, the death toll across a country once among the most stable in Africa has soared to over 800. Much of the violence has pitted other tribes against Kikuyu, long resented for their dominance of Kenyan politics and business.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful whose father was Kenyan, appealed for peace on Nairobi's Capital FM radio station.

"Now is the time for all parties to renounce violence. Now is the time for Kenyan leaders to rise above party affiliations and past ambitions for the sake of peace," Obama said. "Most troubling are new indications that the violence is being organized, planned and coordinated."

In Washington, the State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the ongoing violence underscored the importance of negotiations.

"This is a political dispute and it requires a political solution. The two leaders have to come to some agreement on how that is done," Casey said.

Police said Were's death was being treated "as a murder but we are not ruling out anything, including political motives."

"We suspect the foul hands of our adversaries," Odinga said as he made his way Tuesday to Were's home, where dozens of protesters manned burning barricades of tires and uprooted telephone posts.

Kibaki condemned the killing, appealed for calm and promised police would act swiftly to ensure the perpetrators were dealt with severely.

In the Mathare slum, armed Luo men at a roadblock dragged a Kikuyu man from his car and attacked him with machetes, volunteer aid worker Fospeter Ouma said. "They slashed him so much. I think he must have died," he said.

Angry supporters of Were in the slum area of Dandora, the murdered politician's constituency, set fire to homes and shops owned by Kikuyus and brandished axes and machetes.

Police fired tear gas, and later live bullets, to disperse them, and beat them with clubs. An AP Television cameraman saw a policeman pursue protesters down a mud road, shooting at them with a pistol.

In Western Kenya's Rift Valley, about 5,000 people set fire to homes and smashed shop windows in Naivasha, dragging away goods. Five police officers fired into the air but were unable to control the turmoil. Naivasha's police chief tried to calm the crowd but was pelted with stones and fled in his car.

A police helicopter and two military helicopters then flew over the crowd and officers began shooting, sending people running in panic. A reporter saw two bodies with bullet wounds, but it was unclear whether they were shot by officers in the air or on the ground.

Reporters also watched the helicopters swoop down, with officers firing on a mob of armed Kikuyus pinning down hundreds of Luos outside the Naivasha Country Club. Kikuyus, armed with machetes and clubs inset with nails, had prevented the Luos from escaping for two days.

On Tuesday, police began evacuating them, and police chief Grace Kakai said the helicopters helped.

"There were very big crowds gathering and we had to disperse them so we used helicopter patrols. They were not firing at the crowd. We were trying to scare them, not hurt them," she said. Some 300 Luos were evacuated, she said.

The Rift Valley has seen some of the worst of the postelection violence. At least 90 people were killed there over the weekend.

Kibaki and Odinga blame each other for the violence, which has driven 255,000 people from their homes. The two men have traded accusations of "ethnic cleansing." Human rights groups and officials charge the violence has become organized.

Kenyan rivals meet for first time since elections

By KATY POWNALL, Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya - Kenya's president and its main opposition leader met Thursday for the first time since the disputed Dec. 27 presidential vote sparked nationwide violence that left hundreds dead.

President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga arrived at the president's office in downtown Nairobi for the meeting. They were accompanied by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who brokered their talks and is mediating.

Kibaki had insisted on direct talks with Odinga, who refused to meet without a mediator. Annan is leading a mediation mission of the African Union that began work Wednesday.

Some 700 people have been killed in violence that erupted after Kibaki was declared winner of the elections despite a deeply flawed vote tally.

International allies have urged Kibaki and Odinga to negotiate a power-sharing agreement that might create a new position of prime minister for Odinga.

Kibaki told Annan that he wants to resolve the political crisis, a government statement said.

"President Kibaki also informed Mr. Annan ... on steps his government was taking to open political dialogue and ensure national reconciliation and healing," the statement said.

In another encouraging sign, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni won an agreement from both sides to set up a judicial commission to investigate vote rigging. Museveni met separately with Kibaki and Odinga on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Annan persuaded Odinga to call off protests that had been planned for Thursday in defiance of a government ban. Scores of Odinga's supporters have been gunned down by riot police in earlier demonstrations.

New York-based Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, said Thursday it has evidence that opposition party leaders "actively fomented," organized and directed ethnic attacks in Kenya's western Rift Valley, where some of the worst violence has been perpetrated in the aftermath of the disputed election.

Human Rights Watch said more attacks are being planned on members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe. An opposition legislator from the region denied the charges.

Russia will counter U.S. missile shield, says Putin

By Oleg Shchedrov

President Vladimir Putin on Friday renewed criticism of U.S. plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe, saying Russia would take "appropriate measures" to counter the system.

Putin told Czech President Vaclav Klaus at a Kremlin meeting that the proposed missile shield would be used to track Russian military activities.

"These systems will monitor Russian territory as far as the Ural mountains if we don't come out with a response," Putin told Klaus. "And we will indeed do this. Anyone would."

"We will not get hysterical about this. We will just take appropriate measures," he said, without elaborating.

Russia views the U.S. plan to base 10 missile interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic from 2012 as a major threat to its national security.

Washington says the system is needed to defend Europe and U.S. forces there against what it calls "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea. But top Russian politicians say the U.S. plan could disrupt European stability and fuel a new Cold War-style arms race.

Moscow's top brass say the missile shield does not pose any immediate military threat for Russia, but warn that Russia will have to develop new anti-missile technology to counter it.

Speaking at a news conference with Klaus, Putin compared the missile shield plan with the deployment of U.S. Pershing-2 missiles in Western Europe in the early 1980s, which triggered a bitter diplomatic crisis in the final years of the Cold War.

In Washington, U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom H. Casey said the defense shield should not be seen as "altering the strategic balance or changing the fundamental nature of the relationship between Russia and the West."

"I think there's a tremendous difference between the situation in 2007 versus the situation in, say, 1987," Casey told a daily briefing.

But the dispute over missile defense has strained already stormy relations between Moscow and Washington, with some officials talking of a new Cold War.

In a sign of growing tensions, Putin announced in a speech Thursday that Russia was freezing its commitments under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, a 1990 deal hammered among NATO and former Warsaw pact nations at the end of the Cold War to maintain the regional strategic balance.

"For the first time, elements of the U.S. strategic nuclear system are appearing on the European continent," Putin said on Friday. "This element dramatically changes the security situation in Europe.

"We do not understand ... what is happening in Europe now that requires such aggressive actions," Putin said. "We see no arguments for deploying the missile shield in Europe."

European Commission President Manuel Barroso, visiting the United Nations in New York on Friday, criticized Putin's stance.

"The announcement regarding CFE was disappointing and, in fact, it is sending a signal that is not the best signal, not the most helpful for the kind of relations that we in Europe want to have with Russia," Barroso told reporters.

U.S. Launches New Attacks in Somalia

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press Writer

U.S. helicopter gunships launched new attacks Tuesday against suspected al-Qaida members, a Somali official said, a day after American forces launched airstrikes in the first offensive in the African country since 18 U.S. troops were killed there in 1993.

The latest attacks killed at least 27 civilians in the town of Afmadow in southern Somalia, lawmaker Abdiqadir Daqane told The Associated Press.

At least one AC-130 gunship carried out an airstrike Monday evening against targets in the town about 220 miles southwest of the capital of Mogadishu, Somali officials said. It was not immediately clear how many people died in those attacks, but Somali officials said there were reports that many were killed.

The U.S. attacks were targeting Islamic extremists, said a Somali Defense Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. Earlier, Somalia's president had said the U.S. was hunting suspects in the 1998 bombings of the two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and had his support.

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off Somalia's coast and launched intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia, the military said. Three other U.S. warships are conducting anti-terror operations off the Somali coast.

U.S. warships have been seeking to capture al-Qaida members thought to be fleeing Somalia after Ethiopia invaded Dec. 24 in support of the government and drove the Islamic militia out of the capital and toward the Kenyan border.

The Islamic extremists are believed to be sheltering suspects in the embassy bombings, and the raids are designed to keep the militants from posing a new threat to the government.

The White House would not confirm the attacks, nor would the Pentagon.

A U.S. government official said at least one AC-130 gunship was used Monday evening. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the operation's sensitivity.

It was the first U.S. offensive in the Horn of Africa country since the Americans led a U.N. force in the 1990s that intervened in Somalia in an effort to fight famine. The mission led to clashes between U.N. forces and Somali warlords, including the "Black Hawk Down" battle that left 18 U.S. servicemen dead.

Witnesses said at least four civilians were killed Monday 30 miles east of Afmadow, including a small boy. The claims could not be independently verified.

"My 4-year-old boy was killed in the strike," Mohamed Mahmud Burale told the AP by telephone. "We also heard 14 massive explosions."

Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said it was not known how many people were killed, "but we understand there were a lot of casualties. Most were Islamic fighters."

Witnesses said that in Tuesday's attack, the helicopters opened fire on the road that leads to the Kenyan border. They said they could not clearly make out the markings on the aircraft.

Daqane said two newlyweds were among the dead Tuesday.

The U.S. Embassy in Nairobi reissued a terror warning Tuesday to Americans living in or visiting the Horn of Africa.

Monday evening's airstrike came after the suspects were seen hiding on a remote island on the southern tip of Somalia, close to the Kenyan border, Somali officials said. The island and a site near the village of Hayi, 155 miles to the north, were hit.

The main target was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who allegedly planned the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 225 people.

He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 12 miles north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.

Fazul, 32, joined al-Qaida in Afghanistan and trained there with Osama bin Laden, according to the transcript of an FBI interrogation of a known associate. He came to Kenya in the mid-1990s, married a local woman, became a citizen and started teaching at a religious school near Lamu, just 60 miles south of Ras Kamboni, Somalia, where one of the airstrikes took place Monday.

Largely isolated, the coast north of Lamu is predominantly Muslim and many residents are of Arab descent. Boats from Lamu often visit Somalia and the Persian Gulf, making the Kenya-Somalia border area ideal for him to escape.

President Abdullahi Yusuf told journalists in the capital, Mogadishu, that the U.S. "has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies." Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Aideed told The Associated Press the U.S. had "our full support for the attacks."

But others in the capital said the attacks would only increase anti-American sentiment in the largely Muslim country.

"U.S. involvement in the fighting in our country is completely wrong," said Sahro Ahmed, a 37-year-old mother of five.

Already, many people in predominantly Muslim Somalia had resented the presence of troops from neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population and has fought two brutal wars with Somalia, most recently in 1977.

The U.S. Central Command reassigned the Eisenhower to Somalia last week from its mission supporting NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, said U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown in Bahrain, where the Navy's Fifth Fleet is based.

"Eisenhower aircraft have flown intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia," Brown told The Associated Press.

The spokesman said the Eisenhower was the only U.S. aircraft carrier in the region. The vessel is carrying approximately 60 aircraft, including four fighter jet squadrons, he said.

Ethiopia forces had invaded Somalia to prevent an Islamic movement from ousting the weak, internationally recognized government from its lone stronghold in the west of the country. The U.S. and Ethiopia both accuse the Islamic group of harboring extremists, among them al-Qaida suspects.

Ethiopian troops, tanks and warplanes took just 10 days to drive the Islamic group from the capital, Mogadishu, and other key towns.

Ethiopian and Somali troops had in recent days cornered the main Islamic force in Ras Kamboni, a town on Badmadow island, with U.S. warships patrolling offshore and the Kenyan military guarding the border to watch for fleeing militants.

The AC-130 is armed with 40 mm guns that fire 120 rounds per minute and a 105 mm cannon, normally a field artillery weapon. The gunships were designed primarily for battlefield use to place saturated fire on massed troops.

U.S. officials said after the Sept. 11 attacks that extremists with ties to al-Qaida operated a training camp at Ras Kamboni and al-Qaida members are believed to have visited it.

Leaders of the Islamic movement have vowed from their hideouts to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war in Somalia, and al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden's deputy has called on militants to carry out suicide attacks on the Ethiopian troops.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in an interview published Tuesday in the French newspaper Le Monde that suspected terrorists from Canada, Britain, Pakistan and elsewhere have been among those taken prisoner or killed in the military operations in Somalia.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the Horn of Africa nation of 7 million people into chaos.

A U.N. peacekeeping force, including U.S. troops, arrived in 1992, but the experiment in nation-building ended the next year when fighters loyal to clan leader Mohamed Farah Aideed shot down a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and battled American troops, killing 18 servicemen.

At least 13 attempts at government have failed since then. The current government was established in 2004 with U.N. backing.