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.

World War II Hiroshima A-bomb Pilot Dies

By JULIE CARR SMYTH, Associated Press Writer

Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted for six decades after the war that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night.

Tibbets died at his Columbus home. He suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months.

Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend.

Tibbets' historic mission in the plane named for his mother marked the beginning of the end of World War II and eliminated the need for what military planners feared would have been an extraordinarily bloody invasion of Japan. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime.

The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others.

Three days later, the United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war.

"I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story published on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. "We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible."

Morris Jeppson, the officer who armed the bomb during the Hiroshima flight, said Tibbets was energetic, well-respected and "hard-nosed."

"Ending the war saved a lot of U.S. armed forces and Japanese civilians and military," Jeppson said. "History has shown there was no need to criticize him."

Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his role. He said it was his patriotic duty and the right thing to do.

"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did," he said in a 1975 interview.

"You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal."

He added: "I sleep clearly every night."

Tibbets took quiet pride in the job he had done, said journalist Bob Greene, who wrote the Tibbets biography, "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."

"He said, 'What they needed was someone who could do this and not flinch — and that was me,'" Greene said.

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born Feb. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., and spent most of his boyhood in Miami.

He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps.

After the war, Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide.

"They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions," he said. "At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon."

Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. He later moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.

The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton plans a photographic tribute to Tibbets, who was inducted in 1996.

"There are few in the history of mankind that have been called to figuratively carry as much weight on their shoulders as Paul Tibbets," director Ron Kaplan said in a statement. "Even fewer were able to do so with a sense of honor and duty to their countrymen as did Paul."

Tibbets' role in the bombing brought him fame — and infamy — throughout his life.

In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud.

He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal apology.

Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum had planned to mount an exhibit that would have examined the context of the bombing, including the discussion within the Truman administration of whether to use the bomb, the rejection of a demonstration bombing and the selection of the target.

Veterans groups objected, saying the proposed display paid too much attention to Japan's suffering and too little to Japan's brutality during and before World War II, and that it underestimated the number of Americans who would have perished in an invasion.

They said the bombing of Japan was an unmitigated blessing for the United States and the exhibit should say so.

Tibbets denounced it as "a damn big insult."

The museum changed its plan and agreed to display the fuselage of the Enola Gay without commentary, context or analysis.

He told the Dispatch in 2005 that he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war.

Newhouse confirmed that Tibbets wanted to be cremated, but he said relatives had not yet determined how he would be laid to rest.

Tibbets is survived by his wife, Andrea, and three sons — Paul, Gene and James — as well as a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A grandson named after Tibbets followed his grandfather into the military as a B-2 bomber pilot currently stationed in Belgium.

Workers of the world unite for May Day rallies

By Richard Meares

Workers, students and leftists took to the streets for May Day rallies that stuck to tradition but also showed how the world is changing.

In communist Cuba, whose vast holiday parade has been a fixture for years, illness kept veteran leader Fidel Castro away for the first time in decades.

"We need him to return," said Luisa Cuellar, who rose before dawn to walk with friends to Havana's Revolution Square, the political heart of Cuba. "He is the one who keeps us united."

Police fired in the air to disperse crowds demanding labour rights in the Macau enclave of communist China, while in the United States, where May Day is usually ignored, activists planned to march for illegal immigrants' rights.

Protesters called for better pensions in Greece, work safety in Italy, more HIV medication in Zimbabwe and anti-American defiance in Cuba, where all citizens are expected to march.

Apart from Macau, clashes also flared in Istanbul, Tehran and Berlin but there were few of the street battles seen in Europe in recent years between police and opponents of globalisation.

Police beat and detained hundreds of leftist demonstrators in street fights in Istanbul, in a Turkey already tense after army threats and a million-strong march by secularists opposed to what they see as an Islamist presidential candidate.

Riot police fired tear gas and used water cannons to break up the crowds. Youths threw Molotov cocktails and burnt cars.

In Tehran, protesters seeking better pay and the resignation of the labour minister clashed with police after a rally at a sports stadium, where thousands had earlier protested against government economic policies. There were no reports of injuries.

"They're not paying for our hard work," said protester Ahmad Mirbakhsh, a May Day complaint shared by many around the world.

LONG LIVE THE WORKERS

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez chose the day of the worker to strip the world's biggest multinational oil companies of operational control over massive Orinoco Belt crude oil projects, a vital move in his nationalisation drive.

"The wheel has turned full circle," he told a rally, hailing the takeovers as the South American nation reclaiming its sovereignty. "Long live the workers."

In Germany, union leaders said half a million people joined rallies and criticised Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party for resisting efforts by the Social Democrats' coalition partners to introduce a minimum wage.

"Everyone has to profit from the country's economic upturn -- and not just the rich and high-wage earners," said union leader Michael Sommer.

In Berlin, which has faced May Day violence every year since 1987, police detained 119 people for acts such as throwing bottles, stones and firecrackers at authorities. A spokeswoman said 15 police officers were injured.

At Moscow's biggest march, 20,000 people demanded higher wages and pensions and better working conditions.

About 5,000 Communist supporters waving red Soviet flags and holding pictures of Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin gathered outside a statue of Karl Marx in central Moscow. They called for mass protests to return socialist rule in Russia.

In Italy, half a million people gathered in Rome for an annual holiday rock concert and a further 100,000 waved red flags at a rally in the northern city of Turin.

One place without the usual street rallies this year was Bangladesh, where they are banned under a state of emergency.

Instead, the army-backed interim government urged labour groups to free themselves from the yoke of political parties.

Around the world, some decry U.S. ‘gun culture’

Foreign officials, commentators try to delve into American psyche

Associated Press

The deadly university rampage in Virginia that killed 33 people sent shock waves around the world Tuesday with newspapers and talk shows delving into the American psyche and raising questions about lax gun controls in the United States.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the shooting underscored the problems of a U.S. “gun culture,” but the gun control debate echoed loudest across Europe, which has some of the toughest gun laws in the world.

Prime Minister Tony Blair offered his condolences to the victims’ families.

“I would like to express on behalf of Britain and the British people our profound sadness at what has happened and to send the American people and most especially, of course, the families of the victims, our sympathy and our prayers,” Blair said.

‘Shocked and saddened’
Most expressed shock at the shooting but few said they were surprised — criticizing the availability of guns in the United States, lax gun controls and the number of Americans who cling to the constitutional right that allows them to bear arms.

“The Queen was shocked and saddened to hear of the news of the shooting in Virginia,” Buckingham Palace said. Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, are scheduled to visit Virginia May 3-4.

British Home Office Minister, Tony McNulty, earned a masters degree in political science at Virginia Tech in 1982.

“I think if this does prompt a serious and reflective debate on gun issues and gun law in the states then some good may come from this woeful tragedy,” McNulty said.

Many families expressed relief when they heard their children were safe. Some were still waiting for news.

“He sounded OK. I think they had been very shocked all day — struggling to get in touch with their friends,” Charles Barnwell of Birmingham, England, whose son George, 20, was locked in his dormitory with eight friends during the shooting.

‘We took action,’ Australian PM says
Howard, the Australian prime minister, staked his political leadership on pushing through tough laws on gun ownership in his country after a lone gunman went on one of the world’s deadliest killing sprees 11 years ago in his country.

“We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country,” he said.

The Times of London ran an editorial delving into the American psyche and the weak gun laws across the country.

“Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?”

Gun crime is extremely rare in Britain, and handguns are completely illegal. The ban is so strictly enforced that Britain’s Olympic pistol shooting team is barred from practicing in its own country.

Britain’s 46 homicides involving firearms was the lowest total since the late 1980s. New York City, with 8 million people compared to 53 million in England and Wales, recorded at least 579 homicides last year.

“What exactly triggered the massacre in Virginia is unclear but the fundamental reason is often the perpetrator’s psychological problems in combination with access to weapons,” Swedish daily Goteborgs-Posten commented.

No private arms in China
The shooting drew intense coverage by media in China, in part because the school has a relatively large Chinese student body and because U.S. reports said the gunman may have been Chinese or Asian.

Private citizens are forbidden from owning guns in China.

“Why are there were so many shooting incidents in American schools and universities?” said a comment posted on the popular Internet portal Sohu.com. “People should think why an American-educated student would take revenge against America?”

Yuan Peng, an American studies expert, was quoted by state-run China Daily as saying the shooting illustrated America’s problems with gun control and a lack of security at American universities.

“This incident reflects the problem of gun control in America,” said Yuan, from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a Beijing-based think tank.

Only 7 percent of the more than 26,000 students at Virginia Tech are foreign, according to the school web site. But Chinese undergraduate and graduate students comprise nearly a third of that. There are about 600 or so students and teachers and their family members from China at the school, said Xue, the Chinese student union president.

‘Self-defense imprinted on its DNA’
In Italy, leading daily Corriere della Sera’s ran an opinion piece entitled “Guns at the Supermarket” — a critical view of the U.S. gun lobby and the ease with which guns can be purchased.

“The latest attack on a U.S. campus will shake up America, maybe it will provoke more vigorous reactions than in the past, but it won’t change the culture of a country that has the notion of self-defense imprinted on its DNA and which considers the right of having guns inalienable,” Corriere wrote in its front-page story.

In Italy, there are three types of licenses for gun ownership: for personal safety, target practice and skeet shooting, and hunting. Authorization is granted by the police. To obtain a gun for personal safety, the owner must be an adult and have a “valid” reason.

Several Italian graduate students at Virginia Tech recounted how they barricaded themselves inside a geology department building not far from the scene of the shooting.