|
Beijing: US
chief negotiator Christopher Hill called on North Korea Tuesday to
speed up the promised scrapping of its nuclear program as South
Korea said the process could be finished this year.
“We really have to pick up the pace, get back
to the timelines and get through this very crucial phase of
disablement,” Hill told reporters after an apparent weekend
breakthrough in a stalled nuclear disarmament pact.
South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min Soon told
parliament he expected the North to close down its Yongbyon reactor
by mid- to late July. An unidentified North Korean diplomat in
Beijing gave a similar timeframe on Monday.
BANGKOK: Thailand’s ousted and exiled
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ordered Tuesday to appear
before police in Bangkok next week to face corruption charges.
Thaksin and his wife Pojaman will be charged
with making fraudulent filings to the Securities and Exchange
Commission over the 2003 listing of a property company owned by his
family, police said.
They will also be charged with failing to inform
the Stock Exchange of Thailand about later transactions involving
the company, SC Asset, which was part of Thaksin’s Shin Corp
telecom empire, police added.
Tokyo:
A Japanese party has tapped former Peruvian president Alberto
Fujimori to run in elections next month— even though he is under
house arrest in Chile, reports said Tuesday.
Fujimori, who is of Japanese descent, lived in
exile in Tokyo for five years, during which he plotted a comeback in
Peru. This time around, the People’s New Party, a small
conservative opposition group, has asked Fujimori to run from Chile
for a seat in Japan’s upper house of parliament, Nippon Television
and Kyodo News reported.
Havana:
Cuba held a day of mourning Tuesday for Vilma Espin Guillois, the
guerrilla who became the most powerful woman in the revolution that
propelled her brother-in-law Fidel Castro to power.
She died in Havana Monday aged 77 after a long
illness and was cremated, an official statement read on television
said. It did not name the illness.
It called her a “heroine of the underground,
an outstanding fighter of the rebel army and a tireless struggler
for the emancipation of women and the defense of rights of the
child.”
As wife of the now acting Cuban President Raul
Castro, Espin was considered the country’s first lady as the
veteran leader Fidel Castro’s own partner has stayed away from
public life.
Colombo:
Sri Lankan security forces killed three Tamil Tiger
rebels Tuesday in renewed fighting in the east of the island, the
defense ministry said.
The fighting took place in an area between the
coastal towns of Batticaloa and Trincomalee, where government troops
are trying to clear pockets of guerrillas who escaped a major
offensive earlier this year.
Security forces have stepped up operations in
the east since last year, with the stated aim of isolating the Tamil
Tigers to their de facto mini-state in the north.
KARACHI: Pakistan’s worst electricity
shortage in memory has sent rioters onto the streets of several
cities and poses a fresh headache for embattled President Pervez
Musharraf, officials say.
Regular power cuts lasting from two to 12 hours
increased the resentment of a population amid a blistering heatwave
that claimed the lives of at least 100 people in the past fortnight.
An 18-year-old man in northwest Pakistan shot
himself in the head with a Kalashnikov assault rifle on Saturday, in
what his family said was a protest against the continual supply
problems. He died instantly.
--AFP
|
