US envoys in historic meeting with Myanmar PM

The most senior US official to visit Myanmar for nearly a decade and a half met the military-led nation’s prime minister Wednesday as Washington seeks to improve ties with the Southeast Asian country.

View of downtown Yangon’s main landmark, the Sule Pagoda (L), a 2000-year-old Buddhist temple. (AFP Photo)

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, along with his deputy Scot Marciel, were also set to meet detained Myanmar opposite leader Aung San Suu Kyi later in the day.

The US duo arrived in Myanmar’s remote administrative capital Naypyidaw on Tuesday on a two-day mission aimed at pushing a new policy of engagement by the administration of President Barack Obama.

“They are meeting now,” a Myanmar official told AFP on condition of anonymity after the talks with Prime Minister Thein Sein in Naypyidaw began early Wednesday.

Myanmar officials said the US delegation was not expected to meet Senior General Than Shwe, the country’s leader.

Campbell is the highest ranking US official to travel to Myanmar — formerly known as Burma — since Madeleine Albright went as US ambassador to the United Nations in 1995 during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

The Obama administration recently shifted US policy because its longstanding approach of isolating Myanmar had failed to bear fruit. But Washington has said it will not ease sanctions without conditions.

The visit by Campbell and Marciel is a follow-up to discussions in New York in September between US and Myanmar officials, the highest-level US contact with Myanmar in nearly a decade.

Campbell and Marciel at the time also raised US concerns about Myanmar’s possible military links with nuclear-armed Democractic People’s Republic of Korea.

US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the current visit was a “fact-finding” mission, adding that it was the “first step, or I guess I should say the second step in the beginning of a dialogue with Burma.”

Asked what Campbell discussed on Tuesday in talks with the information minister and local organisations, Kelly said: “They laid out the way we see this relationship going forward, how we should structure this dialogue, but they were mainly in a listening mode.”

Campbell and Marciel were due to fly to the former capital Yangon later Wednesday to meet Suu Kyi and members of her National League for Democracy party, a US embassy spokesman said.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win has said the visit is the “start of direct engagement between the US and Myanmar government” but added that the party was not expecting any immediate “big change”.

Suu Kyi will be discussed when Obama meets Southeast Asian leaders at a regional summit in Singapore in mid-November, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Tuesday, adding that Mr. Thein Sein was expected to attend.

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Obama urges action as Europe ups climate pressure on US

US President Barack Obama stood shoulder to shoulder with Europe Tuesday pressing to “redouble” efforts to combat global warming, but opponents in Congress made clear there would be no smooth path to a climate deal.

Greeenpeace activists hang a banner against climate change at the Sagrada Familia Temple designed by Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona, November 2, 2009.

Fresh from a White House meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also made a heart-felt plea for a climate protocol in a speech to US lawmakers, Obama held talks with European Union leaders to assure them his administration supported a new treaty at next month’s summit in Copenhagen.

At a EU-US summit here, which continues Wednesday with talks with US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Europeans pressed Washington to take action on climate change ahead of December’s climate summit, warning that not enough had been done.

“All of us agreed that it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with (a) potential ecological disaster,” Obama said after talks with European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, who holds the EU presidency, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

She also backed Western calls for emerging nations to do more. “I’m convinced that once we in Europe and America show ourselves ready to adopt binding agreements, we will also be able to persuade China and India to join in,” she said.

But even as she and Obama stressed the need to solidify a framework agreement at Copenhagen, US Republican lawmakers boycotted a committee meeting on an Obama-backed bill to set the first US requirements on curbing carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

Asked what impact Merkel’s speech might have on the US debate, Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on the committee looking at the climate legislation, said: “None whatsoever.”

Earlier Tuesday Barroso, who praised Obama for having “changed the climate on climate negotiations,” said he was “worried by the lack of progress in negotiations” ahead of the December 7-18 climate meeting

The summit in the Danish capital has been convened to seal a treaty to succeed the landmark Kyoto Protocol, whose obligations to cut carbon emissions expire in 2012.

“Of course we are not going to have a full-fledged binding treaty, Kyoto-type, by Copenhagen,” Barroso told reporters. “This is obvious. There is no time for that.”

An international meeting next year in Mexico could be used to finalize a treaty, but Barroso said Copenhagen needed to come up with the framework of the deal, and that the world’s largest economy in particular should take a lead role.

“What we are asking is the United States to show leadership in this, such an important issue,” Barroso said.

After meeting with Obama he stressed that “I am more confident now” about Washington’s commitment, but he also warned against protracted negotiations akin to the stalled Doha round of trade liberalization talks.

“Let’s not do to Copenhagen what has been happening with trade in Doha, where systematically every year we are postponing,” Barroso said.

Sweden’s Reinfeldt said the United States should at least agree on targets for cutting emissions and on financing for developing nations.

“I said that we need to have a clear commitment on targets and on financing coming from the United States,” Reinfeldt told AFP after talks with key senators.

“We can understand if it’s not possible to have everything in place exactly now. But we want a full agreement in Copenhagen and we are able to work through details in the months that come after Copenhagen,” he said.

Reinfeldt spoke as pre-summit negotiations were underway in Barcelona, Spain, where divisions again ran deep between key developed nations and emerging economies.

An EU summit last week agreed that developing nations will need 100 billion euros (146 billion dollars) per year by 2020 to tackle climate change, but failed to nail down how much it would give.

The US role in Copenhagen is overshadowed by the debate in Congress.

The House of Representatives in June narrowly passed the plan to curb carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020 but the bill — already criticized by other developed nations as not ambitious enough — is bogged down in the Senate, where a slightly more ambitious version calls for a 20-percent cut by 2020.

 
 

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China OKs Disney theme park in Shanghai: official

China’s central government has given the green light to the Walt Disney Co. to build its long-awaited first theme park on the mainland in Shanghai, after a decade of negotiations, both sides announced.

Fireworks light up the sky above Sleeping Beauty Castle at Hong Kong Disneyland. (AFP Photo)

The announcement of the deal, which would be one of the biggest ever foreign investments in China, comes less than two weeks before US President Barack Obama makes his first official visit here, starting November 15 in Shanghai.

Neither side disclosed any figures, or gave a time frame for reaching a final agreement, but previous reports have said the US entertainment giant will invest 3.6 billion dollars in the 10-square-kilometre (four-square mile) park.

“The Project Application Report (PAR) for a Disney theme park in the Pudong district of Shanghai has received approval from the relevant authorities of the central government of China,” Walt Disney said in a statement.

“China is one of the most dynamic, exciting and important countries in the world, and this approval marks a very significant milestone for The Walt Disney Company in mainland China,” Disney president and CEO Robert Iger said.

The Shanghai government said in a statement that approval had been granted late last month, and that both sides had “started in-depth talks on details of the project, to build a world-class Disneyland”.

Disney said the government approval of the project would allow both sides to “move forward toward a final agreement” to build and operate the “Magic Kingdom-style theme park with characteristics tailored to the Shanghai region.”

A Shanghai-based Disney executive told AFP on Wednesday: “It’s just a PAR and not the final deal yet.”

When asked how long negotiations could last, the executive said: “It may take several more months.”

The Shanghai park would be part of a major push by Disney into China, to push the giant’s other products in the market of 1.3 billion people.

Disney is one of the most active foreign entertainment companies in China, with more than 600 employees in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, according to corporate data.

Disney products are sold in 5,000 branded, free-standing locations and retail corners in more than 25 Chinese cities. Last year, the company launched its first English learning centre in Shanghai for children aged two to 10.

Hong Kong opened a Disney theme park in 2005.

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World Bank boosts China 2009 growth forecast to 8.4 pct

The World Bank on Wednesday upgraded its 2009 economic growth forecast for China to 8.4 percent on the back of huge public spending but warned stronger domestic demand was needed to ensure a sustainable recovery.

A worker walks past a construction site at the Central Business District of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in Guangdong province October 27, 2009.

The new prediction given by the Washington-based lender in its quarterly update marked a sharp jump from its June forecast for 7.2 percent growth.

Economic growth in the Asian giant would “rise somewhat” in 2010, it added.

“In spite of a large drag on growth from exports amidst the global recession, China’s economy continues to grow robustly because of expansionary fiscal and monetary policies,” the bank said in the report.

“Infrastructure investment has been key but consumption has also held up well. More recently, real estate activity has been recovering as well.”

The upgrade by the World Bank follows similar moves by the International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank after the rapid turnaround in the world’s third largest economy caught economists somewhat by surprise.

The World Bank said China was “on track” to reach Beijing’s oft-stated goal of eight percent growth this year — seen as vital for job creation and warding off social unrest in the country of 1.3 billion people.

But it warned a “successful rebalancing” of the economy was needed to ensure a sustainable recovery in the medium term.

“Rebalancing and getting more growth out of the domestic economy call for more emphasis on consumption and services and less on investment and industry,” the bank said.

China grew by 8.9 percent in the third quarter — the fastest pace in a year — after expanding by 7.9 percent in the second quarter and 6.1 percent in the first three months, the slowest pace in more than a decade.

The recovery has been driven by a four-trillion-yuan (586-billion-dollar) stimulus package unveiled a year ago and a record 8.67 trillion yuan in bank lending in the first nine months of 2009.

China was expected to grow in 2010 even as public spending slowed, the bank said, as demand for Chinese-made goods overseas picked up.

“In 2010 the composition of growth is likely to change … Exports will probably stop being a drag on growth from end-2009 onwards and real estate investment looks set to be stronger,” the bank said.

“However, government-influenced investment, the key driver of growth this year, is bound to decelerate (and) market based investment is likely to continue to feel negative pressure from the significant spare capacity in many manufacturing sectors.”

“In all, we expect GDP growth to rise somewhat in 2010, with risks evenly balanced.”

The bank said it saw no need yet for macroeconomic policies to be tightened while risks and uncertainties in the global economy remained high.

“Underlying inflation is not a concern for now. A somewhat supportive policy stance is appropriate, and it is particularly important to have flexibility to add or subtract support if needed,” the bank said.

 
 

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After Afghan vote, an awkward task for Obama

After attacking Afghan leader Hamid Karzai for months, US President Barack Obama’s administration now faces the awkward task of finding a way to help boost his credibility.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai (C), First Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim (L) and Second Vice President Abdul Karim Khalili attend a news conference in Kabul November 3, 2009.

The Obama administration is studying whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan and had made little secret of its concerns with Karzai’s alleged corruption and ballot-stuffing and his pacts with unsavory warlords.

Starting a new term under the cloud of a hotly disputed election, Karzai on Tuesday pledged to get to work to eradicate corruption. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama expected a “sustained effort” to improve governance.

Analysts said Obama now had a delicate balancing act — pressuring Karzai to act without alienating the leader of a nation at the top of his priority list.

Jamie Metzl, the executive vice president of the Asia Society who served as an election monitor in Afghanistan, said it was crucial for Karzai to gain legitimacy in the eyes both of the world and his own people.

“If President Karzai doesn’t succeed in rooting out corruption and improving governance within Afghanistan there is no level of American troops that can be provided that would bring any recognizable form of success,” Metzl said.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the United States could channel more efforts through local leaders and non-governmental groups but that it was unavoidable to work with Afghanistan’s leader.

“With Karzai, we need to hold him accountable and to stress to him that our aid is not limitless,” she said. “But we also have to understand that the more we force him publicly to do things that he is reluctant to do otherwise, the more we undercut him.”

She said that in any country, it was a hard sell to persuade leaders to undertake costly reforms that leave them less powerful.

“Inevitably there will have to be some sort of improvement in the relationship, otherwise we will be cut out or in a situation where he would be allergic to anything we suggest,” she said.

Karzai enjoyed a warm relationship with former president George W. Bush after the United States and its allies overthrew the extremist Taliban regime and installed him in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Obama was immediately cooler to the Afghan leader. Two key players in his administration, Vice President Joe Biden and regional envoy Richard Holbrooke, have had well-publicized bust-ups with Karzai.

One lawmaker from Obama’s Democratic Party opposed to the Afghanistan campaign said that Karzai’s re-election showed why Obama, instead of considering boosting troops, should find an exit strategy.

“By all accounts, the election was not only a setback, it was a joke,” Representative Jim McGovern said on public broadcaster PBS. “Is this where we’re going to put our money? Are our men and women going to die for this?”

But Kamran Bokhari, an analyst at the Texas-based Stratfor think-tank, argued that the Obama administration set back its own goals in Afghanistan by picking a fight with Karzai.

“There’s a world of difference between Afghanistan and other parts of the world,” Bokhari said. “Politics in Afghanistan is actually the politics of warlordism — alignments between warlords.”

“When you should be dealing with the Taliban insurgency, this whole idea of trying to get someone better than Karzai seems to have undermined whatever little semblance there was of stability and state governance” from Kabul, he said.

Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that despite the feuds, the Obama administration and Karzai’s ultimate interests were in synch.

“The US certainly would like to see President Karzai’s credibility increase among the Afghan people,” she said.

“And of course Karzai needs the assistance from the international community not only to fend off the Taliban but also to provide reconstruction and development aid,” she said.

“So it’s absolutely critical that the US finds a way to work with him.”

 

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Suzuki Motor profit down 63.4 pct in first half

Suzuki Motor Corp. Chairman Osamu Suzuki holds his head as he answers questions during a press conference to announce the company’s financial result in Tokyo on November 2, 2009 (AFP photo)

TOKYO, Nov 2, 2009 (AFP) – Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp. said Monday that its net profit fell by 63.4 percent in the fiscal first half from a year earlier due to weak sales, but it boosted its full-year forecast.

The manufacturer of small cars and motorcycles said its net profit came to 12.5 billion yen (140 million dollars) for the April-September period.

Operating profit plunged 47.5 percent to 31.8 billion yen.

Revenue shrank 31.3 percent to 1.18 trillion yen “due to sales drops at home and abroad as well as the impact of the yen’s rise,” which has reduced overseas income when repatriated, the company said in a statement.

Suzuki however sharply upgraded its annual forecasts, saying the first-half results were better than expected, because of cost cuts and a smaller-than-expected appreciation of the yen.

It projected a net profit of 15 billion yen, up from five billion yen the group forecast in May.

Operating profit is now estimated at 40 billion yen, up from 10 billion yen. Revenue is forecast at 2.3 trillion yen, unchanged from the earlier projection.

The new forecasts still fall short of the previous year’s results. The revised figures would mean a 45.3 percent decline in net profit, a 48.0 percent drop in operating profit and a 23.5 percent slump in sales from last year.

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UN pulls international staff from northwest Pakistan: official

ISLAMABAD, Nov 2, 2009 (AFP) – The United Nations said Monday it was withdrawing its international staff from northwestern Pakistan because of the security situation there.

“They will be relocated. Immediately,” Ishrat Rizvi, a UN spokeswoman, told AFP.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had declared a security condition known as Phase IV in the Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a UN statement said.

“The decision has been taken bearing in mind the intense security situation in the region,” the statement said.

Phase IV is the UN’s second-highest security category.

Under the restriction, local UN staff can continue to work but expatriates are limited to emergency operations, the UN said.

Pakistani policemen secure the site after a sucide bomb blast in Rawalpindi on November 2, 2009. A suicide bomber on a motorbike ripped through a queue of people collecting salaries near a four-star hotel in Pakistan’s city of Rawalpindi, killing 20 people, a police official said. (AFP photo)

Late last month the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) temporarily closed distribution centres serving more than two million people in the northwest because of security fears.

The closure affecting the Swat Valley region followed a suicide bombing of the WFP compound in the capital Islamabad. The attack left five aid workers including an Iraqi national dead.

Rizvi could not immediately say how many foreign staff would be evacuated.

“We don’t have big numbers of international staff in that region,” she said.

Billi Bierling, spokeswoman for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Pakistan, said the new restrictions will largely affect long-term development projects, not emergency operations currently underway in both the Swat Valley and FATA.

Almost all the WFP food distribution centres that were temporarily closed in Swat have reopened, she said.

They have been giving out supplies for those displaced this year by fighting in that area between the army and Taliban, which forced around two million people to flee.

Further south, UN agencies are working through local partners to distribute food, blankets and other essentials to people displaced by a major military offensive that began last month in South Waziristan, part of FATA.

Up to 250,000 people have fled the offensive in that tribal region on the Afghan border and moved to neighbouring Dera Ismail Khan and Tank, a government official said Sunday.

But even before the Phase IV decision, security concerns had prevented the deployment of international staff to Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, or South Waziristan, Bierling told AFP.

Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked extremists have carried out a two-year campaign of attacks in Pakistan that have killed more than 2,000 people.

On Monday a bomber on a motorbike killed 20 people in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, neighbouring Islamabad.

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ECB rates on hold, experts view bank loan policy

 Eurozone interest rates are set firmly on hold and any signs of change will probably show up first in the European Central Bank‘s exceptional loan support measures, analysts say.

“The ECB will leave interest rates on hold at 1.0 percent at its November policy meeting,” Capital Economics economist Jennifer McKeown said on Friday. Bank policymakers convene on Thursday.

The rate has been at a record low since May and persistent concern over the strength of an anticipated eurozone economic recovery will keep it there for some time, experts say.

European business and consumer confidence is on the rise, having firmed in October for the seventh consecutive month, but ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet has stressed that a recovery would be “uneven.”

The euro’s rise in value against the dollar has stirred up a headwind for exports from eurozone countries, while domestic consumption remains fragile amid fears that unemployment could climb higher in 2010.

A giant symbol of the euro currency outside the European Central Bank in Frankfurt

The US Federal Reserve and the ECB “still harbour doubts about the pace of recovery and expect only lacklustre growth in the medium term,” Commerzbank economists said in a research note.

But the ECB has also warned banks to brace for the end of “enhanced credit support,” which expanded after the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008.

ECB governing council member Axel Weber, who is also the German central bank governor, commented last week that dependence on central bank funds was “certainly not a sustainable business model.”

“Banks should prepare for the progressive withdrawal of medicine administered by central banks,” Weber said.

The main feature of ECB support has been the supply of unlimited amounts of cash at its benchmark rate for periods of up to a year, aimed at keeping credit flowing through eurozone banks to the wider economy.

Reaching a peak in June with one-year loans of 442 billion euros (655 billion dollars) — the largest volume of funds ever provided in a single step — the policy has helped bring down interbank lending rates.

But banks have been slow to relay much of the credit to businesses and households, saying that demand has fallen as a result of the global downturn.

In September, eurozone lending to the private sector contracted for the first time on record, though an ECB bank lending survey showed later that banks could begin easing credit standards soon and that demand for home mortgages was firmer.

The economic think tank Ifo said Friday that the credit hurdle in Germany, the eurozone’s largest economy, was slightly lower in October though large firms found it harder than smaller ones to secure loans.

As a first step in what is called an “exit strategy” for unorthodox measures, the ECB could announce that its next 12-month refinancing operation in December could be the last, and/or that it will begin to charge more than 1.0 percent for central bank funds.

But Weber implied that the policy of granting all requests for funds, also an exceptional measure, would likely be continued even after the length of time they are loaned for was cut back towards the previous maximum of three months.

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Abdullah pulls out of Afghan run-off election

Opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah announced on Sunday that he was pulling out of this week’s run-off presidential election in Afghanistan.

“The decision which I am going to announce was not an easy one. It was a decision that I have taken after wide-ranging consultations, with the people of Afghanistan, my supporters and influential leaders,” Abdullah told supporters.

“In protest against the misconduct of the government and the Independent Election Commission (IEC), I will not participate in the election,” he added.

Abdullah’s decision is set to plunge Afghanistan into further uncertainty with the country in political limbo since the first round of voting on August 20, which was tainted by widespread vote-rigging.

Following the widespread fraud in the first round, Abdullah had demanded President Hamid Karzai sack the head of the IEC Azizullah Ludin and suspend four ministers who campaigned for the incumbent.

Opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah, pictured, has announced that he was pulling out of this week’s run-off presidential election in Afghanistan

Abdullah’s camp had set a deadline of Saturday for Karzai to bow to his demands, saying that he would not take part in a contest that would not be free and fair.

His demands have so far received short shrift, with the IEC saying Ludin can only be dismissed by the supreme court while Karzai said Abdullah had no right to interfere in ministerial positions.

Karzai’s share of the vote in the first round fell to 49.67 percent after a UN-backed watchdog deemed around a quarter of all votes cast to be fraudulent.

Insistent that the fraud had been overstated, Karzai only agreed to a run-off under extensive diplomatic pressure from Washington, highlighted when he made the run-off announcement standing alongside US Senator John Kerry.

Asked whether the outcome of a run-off with only one candidate would result in a legitimate government, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday that such situations were “not unprecedented.”

“We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward. I don’t think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election,” she said.

“I’m not going to comment on what any of the candidates might decide to do,” Clinton said, adding: “It’s a personal choice which may or may not be made.”

Abdullah won just over 30 percent in the first round and would have had a mountain to climb if he was to overhaul Karzai in the run-off.

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Clinton arrives in Morocco in Mideast peace push

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived Sunday in the Moroccan city of Marrakech on the next stop in her diplomatic mission to relaunch the stalled Middle East peace process.

In Marrakech the US top diplomat is scheduled to meet on Monday and Tuesday with her Arab counterparts attending the sixth Forum for the Future, jointly organised by Morocco and Italy.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R)and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Clinton travelled to the northwest African country after talks in the Middle East with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The United States is pushing both sides to resume peace negotiations which were suspended after the Israeli offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip last December and January.

The situation in the Middle East and the dialogue between the West and the Islamic world will be the two main themes at a dinner debate at the Forum on Monday evening.

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